Reliquary for Martha.

Redmond, Washington:: Mari Eckstein Gower,, 2022.. Edition of 5. 11 x 7"; 14 spread. Inkjet printed on superfine cover paper. Materials: laser cut plexiglass; walnut and cherry woods; vintage buttons, linen tape, thread. Drum leaf binding with linen tape timeline on a 6 x 6 ½ x 1 in laser cut spool, extending to 76". Housed in a 12 5/8 x 8 ¼ x 2 ¾" layered box. Signed and numbered by the artist. Text, paintings, and ecoprints by Mari Eckstein Gower. Engineering and fabrication by Kat Gower. Mari Gower: "In 1914 Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo, becoming the icon for human-induced species extinction. 20 years earlier, people thought such an event impossible. At their peak the birds migrated in flocks numbering in the billions. They were the most numerous avian species on the planet. It's hard for those numbers to sink in. Even more difficult is that after 100 years of habitat loss and overhunting their numbers had reduced to zero. "For years this story has fascinated me. It's perhaps the most graphic example of an extinction event that is directly attributed to human activity. I've wanted to do an artist book about this subject for years. But it's taken me all this while to arrive at a way to do justice to the many facets of the story.  "In 'Reliquary for Martha' I approach the subject from several directions: through words, images, and a 3-dimensional timeline to unspool the trajectory of my protagonists - humans and birds - one rising and the other in decline as the nineteenth century unfolds. I've chosen to riff on the concept of scientific specimen collections being a form of reliquary. Too often now they are the only place one can observe firsthand the remains of animals long extinct, as well as those that are sadly living on the brink.