Dorothy’s Dream (Tellgram)

Mark Chamberlain and Jerry Burchfield
Dorothy’s Dream (Tellgram)
Cibachrome photogram, 1988
5 x 15 feet
Gift of the estate of the artist
2018.012.007

In 1980 Mark Chamberlain and Jerry Burchfield initiated the Laguna Canyon Project, a sixteen-phase documentation of the Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach. The project developed in response to the threat of building construction in the canyon. It promoted public understanding of the area’s ecological importance and in the end helped ensure its preservation. For the seventh phase of the project Chamberlain, Burchfield and volunteers collected trash alongside the canyon road and listed the items in the manner of an archaeological study. They arranged the trash on light-sensitive paper, against which it appeared in silhouette after illumination. The results were strangely beautiful large-scale Cibachrome photograms, which the artists named Tellgrams since they were heralds of the eighth phase of the project, The Tell.