Elk

Elk began in June 2003 and over the next fourteen years 34 issues came into view, always in a consistent photocopied 5 3/8 × 8” format, saddle-stitched, 60 or so pages, with a black and white interior and full-color cover. Concurrently ruminative and roughly constructed, it built upon a conduit of spontaneous connections gleaned from found materials paired into occasionally straightforward but more frequently enigmatically allusive associations. Each spread featured image and text snippet duos borrowed from a plethora of sources, photographs from books and unorthodox periodicals, works of art, historical documents, letters, poems, spam emails, mash notes, and advertisements, placing them into singular contexts in an effort to tease out evocative metaphorical and metaphysical affinities folded into formal and compositional vibrations. Reproducing and re-scaling each picture or extract, it distilled a combination of often unfamiliar source material that negated notions of the distinctions between the precincts of high art and various underground effusions, creating through clarity of intent an ephemeral entity of mysterious origins. Apparently lacking in any identifiable theme though arranged with a discriminating far-flung catholic sensibility, Elk’s collaborative contents related to one another through tangible yet recurrently uncanny methods.