Roads Gone Wild

The final project for the urban books class I'm taking is three editions of a handmade book. The class is basically an introduction to bookmaking (technical fabrication, narrative, everything about a book) and the book is a means to explore the city of St.Louis.

My original idea was to do a book of St.Louis taboos. "North of Delmar" would have been the title. But then I realized I don't know the city well enough to be fluent in the unspoken. Plus, after riding the metro a few times, and walking around East St.Louis, I don't think I'd have much material for my book.

So I went back to a place I'd discovered while biking in way north St.Louis, in the Chain of Rocks park. I've blogged about it before. The first pass of the book I based on what I saw out there was basically natural reclaimation porn. I mean, I literally made a porn mag. Roads Gone Wild.

There was something perverse about the abandonment of the street, and the relationship between the pieces of urban infrastructure and the surrounding trees, leaves, and earth. The way the trees twined with the lamp posts, and how the concrete and steel bollards penetrated the soil. I picked up on the sensual aspects of it and took it to extremes.

It was a little awkward to present to my female professor. More awkward later to present it to the other foreign professor of the class. I started off by saying "well, its based on the idea of a girlie magazine..." and then had to awkwardly explain what a girlie mag was because he'd never heard the term before for porn magazines.

And then we had a guest critic, a bookmaker who came from Italy, and as I slid my battered copy of The Street Next Door over, I decided I needed to move on and do something different.

Something a little more staid. Too staid actually, but more sublime. The problem with the 'infrastructure porn' was that it was too much of a one-liner. It was funny and slightly acid in its commentary, but it didn't really capture the place. I wanted to get a sense of the fantastic potential, while still keeping the underlying text. We'll see how it turns out.