Jan Estep, Issue: LAND, Volume Two, October 2010, collaborative artist book, paperback, perfect bound, four-color, offset printed, 80 pages, 6.5" x 9", includes “What Does a Sea Squirt Know? Why Art Needs a Brain,” and “Grand Canyon Suicide Map.”

Issue: Land

[2010] Issue: LAND is a group artist book featuring 15 artistic projects that explore current environmental and land-use issues. The collection demonstrates a broad sweep of political, conceptual, and aesthetic approaches from urban interventions to documentary photography to building green spaces to alternative mapmaking. The sites of investigation include the Mississippi River, underutilized lots in central Berlin, the Grand Canyon, the Alaskan wilderness, oil fields underneath Los Angeles, Shandong mining district in eastern China, Minneapolis city parking spots, and the forest floor. Issue: LAND shows the way a few artists engage the natural/cultural world around them to reveal often overlooked aspects of our relationship with the environment.

Participating artists include Christine Baeumler (USA), Etienne Boulanger (France), The Center for Land Use Interpretation (USA), Song Chao (China), Matthias Einhoff (Germany), Jan Estep (USA), Simon Faithfull (England), Terike Haapoja (Finland), Nance Klehm (USA), KUNSTrePUBLIK (Germany), Laura Corcoran Mahnke (USA), Anna Metcalfe (USA), Daniel Seiple (USA/Germany), Mona Smith (USA), and Rebar (USA)/Works Progress (USA).

The full-color, offset-printed book is an 80-page, perfect-bound, short-run edition of 500 copies. It is designed and edited by Jan Estep, and printed by Minneapolis-based Shapco Printing, Inc. The visual projects are contextualized with an essay written by Estep and short bios of the artists.

Table of Contents:

"What Does a Sea Squirt Know? Why Art Needs a Brain," by Jan Estep
"Align Yourself with the Invisible," by Nance Klehm
"Coal Miners," by Song Chao
Mississippi River Story Boats, by Anna Metcalfe
Community, Inhale--Exhale, and Dialogue, by Terike Haapoja
Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, and Urban Crude: The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin, by The Center for Land Use Interpretation
PARK(ing) Day, by Rebar and Works Progress
Zugenruhe, and Habitats: Minnesota, USA, Loreta, Peru, by Laura Corcoran Mahnke
Bdote Memory Map, by Mona Smith
Grand Canyon Suicide Map, by Jan Estep
East Side Gateway Rain Garden, by Christine Baeumler
Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, by KUNSTrePUBLIK
The Single Room Hotel, by Etienne Boulanger
Mobile Research Station no.1, by Simon Faithfull
Fontane, by Daniel Seiple
Celebration, by Matthais Einhoff
Artist Bios

Issue: LAND is the second edition in a four-part series of independently published artist books organized by Estep titled "Issue." Each offset-printed book explores a chosen theme from a variety of artistic perspectives. The remaining volumes were all produced during a workshop course that I teach at the University of Minnesota called ARTS5490 Issue: Image and Text. The first in the series, Issue: Below Ground (2008), investigates all things subterranean and features 16 graduate and undergraduate artist projects. The series also includes Volume three, Issue: Erasure (2012), and Volume four, Issue: Seen/Unseen (2014).

Funding for Issue: LAND was provided by the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences at the University of Minnesota. An Arts Writers Grant from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation supported the writing of Estep's essay.

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