LINES UNLIMITED VOLUME 2 Peter Kimack8.75 x 11 PB • 41 Pgs • $40.00 • ISBN 1-60052-020-0-2
Bottlecaps lie nestled in a bush, a broken comb is buried in leaves, a necklace and watch are intertwined with vines. All these items are difficult to locate at first because they are so much a part of their surrounding landscape. Where once they had a place in the life of a human being, they are now a living, growing part of the plants and animals around them.
Their presence implies both a loss and a gain. The loss is perhaps not so much that a person has misplaced his or her belonging but that the belonging has misplaced it’s owner. The gain can be seen in the way these objects are so naturally adapted to an environment without humans. Their immersion in this environment and the fact that they are hard to see upon first glance implies the environment’s total acceptance of the lost and misplaced items. In addition, it suggests that the owners of these items might never be coming back. Thus, their presence in the drawings is both haunting and comforting. Their owners are gone but they do provide us with some kind of familiarity in a land that would otherwise be much less tangible.
Similar to the first edition, the landscapes are barren, as Earth might be in the future – returned to its original state where only plants and wild animals live. Through these images of a possible future, it seems as though Kimack is asking us to be the archeologists of our own lives – taking stock of things about which we don’t normally think twice.
As the old saying goes, “one man’s loss is another man’s treasure.” That is quite true in Kimack’s Second Edition, where the coloring becomes more interactive and surprises abound.
– Renee Zalles
