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The Record of the Month Club project finished with its 12th installment in July 2023. I have been wanting to follow it up with another publication-styled project, but instead of the Columbia House racket (with OMNI lurking beneath the surface), I'm thinking Better Homes & Gardens morphing into a paranormal Whole Earth Catalog.

Whole Earth Catalog page spread
Btw: here is the entire Whole Earth Catalog archives

And, of course, tinged with all the genre flavors I like to pull into projects: psychedelic sci-fi, astral horror, leftfield science, misfired occultism, etc.


At the end of April, I would like to set a deadline for contributions for a "toolkit": non-anthropocentric audio recordings (the Plantasia approach comes to mind), enigmatic diagrams/schematics/patterns, articles & ruminations, garden planning designs, documentation of cultivation projects, weird horticultural research/findings, and whatever else contributors might come up with.

Piet Oudolf garden design drawing
Piet Oudolf garden design plan

The project would again be online — a dual-45-single magazine, rather than the traditional stapled magazine — as if all of its contents erupted from the gatefold. A difference with this new project might be that contributions land in the threshold between digital and audio. I have been taking inspiration from online archives of old manuscripts:

Old manuscript artifact Old manuscript artifact Old manuscript artifact Alchemy book pages


My own contribution: photo documentation of a sculpture I'm planning for my front parkway garden project before the greenery comes back: a last-hurrah for my Reeds installation that I would like to rework. And, maybe some audio tinkering.

Reeds project at GAG Reeds project in Wisconsin


What would be publicly presented

I am thinking of resuscitating the mailing campaign from the previous 2 years — a sort of magazine subscription promo that goes completely haywire — to promote the online manuscript. And perhaps, some sort of physical mini-publication — a sort of book of sigils — as a promotion to be given away at select locations, or select events. With the Brood XIII cicadas coming this summer, it would be nice to have some outdoor events in anticipation.

 

Update, April 10

Revised deadline

I would like to offer a soft deadline of Wednesday, May 1 (Beltane, May Day). World Naked Gardening Day on May 4 was a temptation, but I'll admit I'm not personally participating. I'll set an absolute deadline for Sunday, May 12 (Mothers' Day).

 

Sharing some of my own progress

As I was thinking about this project last year, I had already been collecting artifacts from old gardening periodicals from a century ago:

Vintage garden conception Old gardening ads: Montamower, and nicotine Vintage rock garden article, with diagrams


I have planted the first stage of my front garden installation:

Painted implements in front garden Painted implements in front garden Painted implements in front garden

I have been working from a garden plan, still in development:

Drawing of garden design plan

In a week or so, I'll remove last year's foliage and lay down mulch, and then install "fruiting body" sculptures.


I have also been creating patterns, for painting:

3 pattern drawings

I'll cut shapes from these like cloth—based on Gunne Sax dress patterns:

Gunne Sax dress, and patterns

The 1970s Gunne Sax dress seems to be the pinnacle of Cottagecore, which as a trend depicts the perfect 20-minute set-up of any properly vindictive folk horror film.