Transformations: Wood/metal/stone/sundry

TRANSFORMATIONS: Wood/metal/stone/sundry celebrates the discovery of, and connection with, found objects that hide within landscapes of urban decay and nature. Objects that, when revealed, stand as testaments to time, place, and the transformative effects of nature and the elements. Thirty-eight contributors (including Sharon Hashimoto, dan raphael, Priscilla Long, Arlene Naganawa, Paul Hunter, Aubrey Birdwell, Anna Odessa Linzer) share their appreciation for "weathered and/or broken, bent, decayed, or rusted objects" that have inspired their poems and essays. The book has 59 full color illustrations of found objects.

In a world torn apart with global wars and machine stealth, I'm craving art full of small things. It's comforting to settle on a board, a rock, or a piece of a machine and imagine it floating in a borderless past that I might try to fill in. This book restores that joy of speculation and imagination by focusing on the materials that these small things are made of-wood/metal/stone/sundry-and then regarding their changes and transformations. That's what the writing conjures here-the specifics that lead readers to reanimate their own surroundings. With each voice and sight line of the objects in Transformations you can feel a long progression. You can also sense that the artists who chose these artifacts are considering their own places in the world.

Objects here-smoothed by the sea, oxidized by dirt and salt, windblown and scalded-are becoming new versions of themselves. Shifts appear in slivers and glimpses, and the poems and prose pieces transform our views of what these things might be. Each object is en route from its once-use into a new context of being placed as art.

Enjoy the winding road that you will take while reading TRANSFORMATIONS-where the varied connections people have made with found objects are explored. So many of the objects written about describe the long-term relationships we make with found objects, both aesthetic and symbolic. Often stretching back decades to childhood, these objects act as protectors, talismans, and road maps of where we have been and where we are still going.