Runaway Horse (2022)

The inside cover is collaged with a color illustration of two men in the jungle attempting to fight off a swarm of ants. Mounted over the top half of this illustration is a box, with open sides, covered by an etched illustration of a child and a young woman holding a book. This box holds a removable tile that features the black horse from the early American oil painting, Runaway Horse. The back of the tile is collaged with fraction exercises from an arithmetic primer. At the bottom of the inside cover is the top of a page of a book with the chapter heading, “Remains of Lost Empires.” The frame is covered with fabric with a green floral paisleyesque pattern against a cream background. Inside the top frame section is a detailed painting of a pair of jaguars on a tree limb. Below, on a raised panel, is a black-and-white, noir-styled photo of a suspicious-looking couple standing at a darkened doorway. In the gap between this panel and the background is a toy deep-sea diver with a small treasure chest tucked beneath his arms. At the feet of the diver are silver glass droplets that cover the floor behind this partition. On a second raised panel at the bottom of the frame is a description of what to do if a person’s clothes catch fire. The framed area is topped with a mirror panel covered by a black wire screen. The inside side panels are photos of Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park experiment workshop.