Topshells and Limpets

A set of two: a pressure print, and a ghost pressure print with trails of letterpress printed Caslon.

Topshells and limpets graze the rocks on the beach at Bucks Mills, leaving trails that seem like lines of writing. Is it anthropocentric to interpret them this way? Or is it biocentric to wonder whether our culture and writing arose from the natural world in the first place? Maybe the gap between nature and culture isn’t so great after all… I began pressure printing using bailer twine and fishing line from the beach at Bucks Mills when I became self-conscious about ‘speaking for’ the more-than-human world. Who did I think I was, appropriating their meanings?! The grazing limpets leave trails that almost look like repeated letters, so I over-printed to indicate the range of species. These trails aren’t communicating in the human sense of the meaning, but that’s not to say that the topshells and limpets aren’t communicating in some way with each other.