Tools for Excavating Project

Perfect-bound field guide
Edition of 50
5x7”
28 pages
Artist: Jean Brennan, 2020


The project began with an excavation of family history related to site and resulted in an ecological and social field guide to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, along with a durational action and accompanying set of tools. The walk traced the perimeter of an aerial bomb military training site, located in an ecologically rare dwarf pine plain during the season’s first snow. The field guide includes an essay, project documentation, and images that register how areas of the Pinelands have been deemed ’sacrificial zones’ (Naomi Klein) despite their ecological significance.