Rhinoceros Project

Anne Beck and Michelle Wilson

Rhinoceros Paper Pour, Shotwell Papermill, San Francisco, CA, August 2019

The Rhinoceros Project is collaboration between Anne Beck and Micelle Wilson, which began with a simple goal: to make a sheet of handmade paper watermarked with an image of Albrecht Durer’s 1515 woodblock print The Rhinoceros, just enlarged to the size of a living rhinoceros. The idea at the beginning was to talk about shifting values systems and embracing life and interconnectedness as intrinsic and irreplaceable. To this end, we embarked on a multi-year journey of public sewing circles to embroider the matrix for the watermark, made two exploratory and explanatory artist books & countless other collaborative artworks using natural dyes, textiles, & handmade paper, amassed a growing reading room and ephemera collection, and have already started a new monumental embroidery to continue the conversation begun through the portal of the rhinoceros.

Website: https://rhinocerosproject.org/

Tracing the Map, Mendocino, CA, September 2018

Sewing Circle, Tenochtitlan Map, Fontecchio, Abruzzo, Italy, July 2021

Project Description

During their residency at Xenoform Labs, the Rhinoceros Project has worked on an artist book and a film. The interrelated projects are based on a narrative of world events, from ancient times to modern day, told through a series of vignettes, all of which led to extinctions of species. Throughout the month they directed their focus on a specific vignette, a meteor strike around the year 313 that is theorized to be the astrological event that influenced the Emperor Constantine before the Battle of the Mlivian Bridge.