The World Was Unbearable Travels of an Observer (2025)

The World Was Unbearable, Travels of an Observer is an altered version of David Fairchild’s “The World Was My Garden, Travels of a Plant Explorer” combined with Mary Oliver’s poem “THE MOTHS”. When starting this project, I knew I wanted to make a statement about the beauty of nature and the fragility of our world. I was inspired to find a poem about moths due to my recent fascination with luna moths. Oliver’s poem perfectly embodies the overwhelming beauty of the world but ends with an abrupt switch describing the unbearable pain associated with the thought that the “world can’t be saved.” Given the world’s current climate and political landscape, I felt this was an experience many of us could relate to.
When creating this piece, I was guided by seven parameters: earth tones, mixed media collage, glued and cut pages, hidden/exposed layout, altered book structure, borrowed images, and handwritten text. I was also guided by five adjectives: vintage, fluttery, contrasting, whimsical, and earthy.
The first step in my process was removing the photo inserts and gluing signatures together. This step took the longest by far, as I wanted to get as smooth as possible pages. While the pages were drying and pressing, I worked on my colleges on separate pieces of paper. Working this way allowed me to visualize all the pages together, ensuring a unified composition. I built each of the 13 collages off of an image found in the original David Fairchild book. I included these images to allow the poem to have a ‘conversation’ with the original book instead of just sitting on top of it.
Once all the pages were glued and the collages finished, I cut the pages to match the collage silhouette. I wanted some pages visible throughout the book to create dimension and a more overwhelming, visually ‘full’ experience, mirroring the experience of Oliver’s poem. This overwhelming design also furthered the disruption caused by the poem’s end. I wanted the background experience to mirror that of the poem. Thus, when the poem abruptly changes tone to a pessimistic worldview, I wanted the final pages to be a solid white background with simple text contrasting the colorful beginning of the book.
My favorite part of the project was creating the collages. The most challenging part was trying to achieve flat pages. Although I was patient and only glued and pressed sections at a time, the pages still had a decent amount of wrinkles. The wrinkles then made adding the script more difficult. Writing the text on the left-sided pages was also challenging due to the spine being in the way. If I were to redo the book, I would remove some of the pages that I could add the text to while they were still flat and then glue them individually back onto the already glued signature pages.