No Safe Levels

Creator

Lise Melhorn-Boe

Description

"Northern Ontario highways are lined with rock cuts, sometimes covered with graffiti. This pop-up rock cut morphs into the artist’s scarred body." - Transformer Press.

"This is a rock cut because I love the rock cuts along the highways up north. People do often put graffiti on the rock cuts, so my graffiti on this ‘rock cut’ is all the heavy metals that are in my body and the size of the lead and mercury are much bigger because I had a much higher concentration of those than say, tin. To visualize — this book is cut out in the shape of me lying down on my side, with my leg stretched out. It connects to the quote down at the bottom, which is: 'There is no separation. We are the environment. So whatever we do to the environment, we do to ourselves,' and that’s David Suzuki. So I am part of these rocks, these rocks are a part of me. This is my personal landscape and it’s my body and its intersections with the environment, with nature, with rocks, with metals." - Lise Melhorn-Boe, interview with Cassandra Kuyvenhoven from "The Garbage-loving Environmentalist," found here: http://unevenearth.org/2016/06/the-garbage-loving-environmentalist/

Publisher

Transformer Press

Subject

Environment, nature

Extent

6.5 x 9.9"

Style

Rock cut, accordion with pop-ups

Material

Acid-free paper, cloth

Technique

Photocopied on acid free paper. Laid in cloth covered boards with interior corner pocket for book to slip into.

Date

2006

Other Information

Edition of 3, State II. Signed and numbered by the artist. More information can be found here: http://www.vampandtramp.com/finepress/t/transformer.html And here: https://lisemelhornboe.ca/essays.html

Recommended Citation

Melhorn-Boe, Lise, "No Safe Levels" (2006). Rollins College Book Arts Collection. 33.
https://scholarship.rollins.edu/book_arts/33

Exhibit Location

This work was featured in the Cornell Fine Arts Museum as a part of the exhibition “Common Ground: Selected Works from The Rollins Book Arts Collection” from September 18, 2021 – December 31, 2021.