Volcanoes, Portal Predictions & Benchmarks

The MFA students have the opportunity to do a bronze pour in the next couple of weeks, and I have been thinking a lot about what kind of object I might be interested in bringing into the world. Below are some thoughts about why the prospect of a pour interest me.

My grandfather, Dwight "Rocky" Crandell, worked as a USGS vulcanologist for most of his life. He predicted the eruption of Mt. St. Helens 5 years before it blew in 1980 (see publication, left), and was responsible for helping to identify where the Osceola mudflows flowed the last time Mt. Rainier erupted. (btw - they flowed into some areas of Washington state that are now being heavily developed, and his research suggests that people living in these areas should be aware of the danger of future devastating mudflows.) Something I learned at a young age was that my grandfather was able to predict the future due to his research into layers of rock, sediment and debris below the surface of the earth. These layers build up over time as they are deposited by wind and water. By looking at the layers, he would note changes in soil, such as a layer of ash or a certain kind of rock, and would measure when these layers were laid upon the earth surface using carbon dating techniques. I always imagined this technique to be something like counting rings on a tree, except counting vertically through layers of soil that were millions of years older than any tree. When he was working on Mt. St. Helens, he noticed layers of ash showing up in hillsides over cyclical periods of time and in this way came to predict that another eruption was due soon.

My connection to my grandfather and an interest in his work lead me to be interested in ceramics during my undergraduate studies, and more currently to ideas of how I might go about predicting the likelihood of Mostlandian portal occurrences.

In undergraduate school, I was drawn to ceramic materials' links to volcanoes and the rock cycle, especially to sedimentary rocks (clay) and metamorphic rocks (fired clay and glazes). I haven't worked with clay in several years, but the molten lava elements of a bronze pour are appealing to me in the same way as looking into the red glow of a fully heated kiln.

As for what this has to do with Mostlandia, one thing that I have been interested in for a while is trying to predict where portals to Mostlandia will occur in the future. For the uninformed, the way that people travel to and from Mostlandia is via portal.. Prior to my work as an ambassador at the Mostlandian Embassy, I headed a research and development team for the Spot-it Brand Portal Spectrometer Company attempting to more accurately predict portal occurrences. I am currently working with the MOST on locating a portal in the South Waterfront neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Essentially our work right now is to discover the equivalent of a layer of ash in space and time that shows the likelihood of Mostlandia being accessible from this place.


What I have been wondering about is whether or not a cast bronze benchmark (or modification thereof), such as those used for marking the elevation or latitude of a geological landmark might be helpful in predicting or documenting my surveys for Mostlandian portals. I am not at all interested in claiming the land within the proximity of this benchmark, but rather in documenting that the site was surveyed for the purpose of locating a Mostlandian portal. My questions are whether or not placing a mark of such permanence in land limits the way people perceive Mostlandia. After all, Mostlandia is in no way a fixed place, nor is it specifically associated with any "land." Mostlandia is and always shall be a place that happens via experience, and oftentimes the experience of Mostlandia ceases to exist in a particular place after its initial occurrence. Should I include language on the benchmark negating its permanency? Should a Mostlandian benchmark even be placed in soil? I'll include some emails to and from The MOST while discussing this in the next post.