Oregon Pilgrimage in Green:
A Forest Journal
for My Brother

Prose Poem by Kim Stafford

Engravings by
Margot Voorhies Thompson

Brother who died by your own hand, it is hard to speak of you. But I need to speak with you. A silence in the human world, in the forest I find you everywhere.

The author's words and artist's images together evoke the natural world and life cycles of the Oregon landscape, a landscape that holds strong memories for Stafford. Here, he spent childhood time with his brother, whose tragic death by suicide is at the heart of this "rhapsody of loss." He now finds in this place both healing and a still-flourishing relationship with his brother.

This original work of art and literature was created through the collaboration of Stafford, Voorhies Thompson, and Sandy Tilcock, the book's designer, printer, and binder. The trio of artists worked closely for nearly two years on the idea, from its original inspiration to the finished work, a book that is a seamless integration of verbal, visual, and physical entity.

The concertina-style book, with an etching of a maidenhair fern on its cover, cascades to reveal a continuous image and text over ten feet in length.

Kim Stafford

Award-wining Oregon poet and author Kim Stafford is artist in residence and director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. His list of publications includes books of nonfiction, poetry, short stories, and children's fiction. He recently completed a memoir about his father, prominent Northwest poet William Stafford, entitled Father in the Best World: Living the Light and Dark with William Stafford (Gray Wolf Press).

Stafford has been described as "a neo-naturalist, one of a still small but growing group of young writers who celebrate landscape with the passion of the English romantics" (Elaine Kendall, LA Times). In Oregon Pilgrimage in Green he unravels memory with "intimate prose as rich as deepwoods loam," exploring life, loss, and healing through place, the forest.

Margot Voorhies Thompson

In her work Portland, Oregon, artist Margot Voorhies Thompson often uses natural motifs; her engravings for Oregon Pilgrimage in Green portray the birth, life, and death of a forest as a metaphor for continuation and for what happened to the author's brother. Voorhies Thompson has received numerous awards and commissions; she is represented by the Laura Russo Gallery in Portland, and her work is held in many private and corporate collections. She is a Board Member of the Northwest Print Council and has been a frequent instructor at Oregon College of Art and Craft and at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work encompasses calligraphy, collage, and large-scale painting as well as printmaking.

Specifications

• Edition of 100 press-numbered and 10 lettered participant copies
• Signed by the author and the artist
• Vertical concertina binding with an etching of a maidenhair fernwhich wraps around the cover boards
• 17 pages 6.5 x 12 inches
• Printed from Centaur monotypes cast by Michael Bixleron Somerset Book using a Vandercook 219 proof press
• Designed, printed and bound by Sandy Tilcock
• Publication Date: November 2000

Price $365.00

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