The Echo Beach Collages

It is overcast and chilly and it looks like it will rain any minute now so the isolated beach is deserted except for us. Missouri, my dog, runs the entire length of the small beach and then back again to where I am standing. It rained last night and I can tell by the wet and smooth sand that we are the first ones here this morning. Missouri is off again, down the length of the beach at her old age full speed, and at the very end she dips briefly into the water, biting the lake with her smiling mouth and swallowing and then biting and spitting out the cold water. I call to her and tell her that she is the fastest little girl on the beach. She responds with a proud smile and then a water belch. She is starting to make her way back to me at a slow trot and I squint my eyes. Things around me become simple and clear; the arrangement of the sand and the rocks and the water and the trees and the sky, each forming bands, layers and slices in the simplified and flattened space my narrowed eyes create. Later at my studio, the acrylic monoprints and ongoing collection of various ephemera merge with these memories and other thoughts as I print, cut, arrange, rearrange, layer and paste the small 4.75 inch by 4.75 inch worlds into existence.