I am drawn to ghost towns they speak to
me that is why I explored California's
old mining country in search of
abandoned towns in the fall of 2013 the
lost remnants of the past move me I am
enchanted by evidence of lives once
lived dissolving into the landscape I
thought that the subject matter would
translate well to my medium of choice
the monotype the monotype is a unique
form of printmaking because it yields
only a single image to create the
monotype I paint with ink onto a sheet
of acetate I then put that painting side
down onto a piece of large paper run it
through the press and the imprint that
the ink leaves is my final image I
didn't want my prints to be repeatable
because the beauty of these towns lies
in their own permanence fleeting and
evocative images of a moment in time
that I tried to capture on paper in this
photograph what caught my eye were not
the buildings but the fence posts hidden
in the center foreground this is what I
saw sometimes unassuming details are the
most powerful as an artist I hope that
these towns and the process of
reimagining my photographs might spark
my imagination and that they might help
me reframe the way that I look at the
world this is Bodie California in 1877
10,000 people called this place home and
was a booming mining town producing tens
of millions of dollars worth of gold
there was a schoolhouse a Chinatown a
red light district and more than 60
saloons Bodie busted as fast as a boomed
as the cost of extracting the or became
too expensive miners left the town in
search of other opportunities today
these buildings and the abandoned car
are all that stand in the Sierra Nevada
mountain range this is randsburg
California it is located in the Mojave
Desert and in 1897 had a population of
more than 3,000 like Bodie it was in
mining town that attracted a rush of
people who wanted to get rich quick over
fifty mines were developed in randsburg
it quickly became one of the largest
mining towns in California's high desert
like many mining towns in the high
desert randsburg suffers from a lack of
water which was wildly expensive to haul
in but there was so much gold to be mind
that the town was prosperous for more
than 20 years randsburg thrived until
nature took over the settlement was
devastated by two major fires in 1903
and then again in 1929 the high desert
geography propelled strong winds which
fueled the flames that engulfed trans
Berg's wooden homes the fires could not
be contained by the limited water supply
between the lack of water and ultimate
depletion of the mines gold randsburg
became unlivable today the town is
basically abandoned and this is garlic
garlic was a milling point for mining
towns in the Mojave meaning that it
processed and distributed the gold that
was dug up in the surrounding area it
also had the essential role of providing
its water to desert mining towns like
randsburg at a tight it was hauling over
eight hundred barrels of water a day out
of wells that were over 210 feet deep
its existence depended on these other
mining towns so when they died out in
the early 1900's soda Garlock today all
that remains are a few decaying
buildings and a dried-up water tower
after visiting these abandoned towns I
began to wonder how many places are like
this once-thriving now abandoned it's
hard to get an exact count of how many
ghost towns exist today because there
are so many in California there are more
than 600 ghost towns in Arizona there
are more than 275 Colorado 300-plus and
then Nevada there are more than 530
ghost towns are everywhere some are
famous many forgotten all our examples
of once thriving communities that lost
their economic reason for being and the
resources to sustain them
ghost towns are so haunting to me
because I imagine them as they once were
alive and booming now dead people were
forced to pick up their lives to migrate
to other opportunities in search of
something new that could sustain them
the town's abandonment speaks to us
about the transitory nature of these
places that we inhabit as people
migrated to other opportunities what
they left behind to connects us the
stories of a different time but although
it was a different time what if these
stories contain valuable lessons about
our future when I first got the idea of
traveling to different ghost towns I
expected to be transported to the past
but these abandoned town surprised me
because they really launched me into
questions about our future and made me
realize how fleeting these places are
that we perceive as permanent they make
me wonder how many ghost towns are we in
the process of creating today thank you