“A small sketchbook is used to record the daily ritual of sharing coffee. Each page is dated, and each page records the marks left by one day’s coffee. The book is used as a coaster, accumulating the daily coffee stains/rings.” – Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger

This fragrant example of collaborative process work and experimental conceptual/performative printmaking is a signature example of Miller and Shellabargers’ collaborative performance and visual arts practice. Often using domestic ephemera, craft, and ritual they document intimate portraits of their relationship with deceptively elegant and simple artworks that have complex human, art, and historical associations. The reiteration of essential mark-making seems especially evocative in this volume of the project (there are many other books in the series) which covers the period of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdowns that soon followed, and the meteoric rise of the profile of the Midwest catalyzed by George Floyd’s murder.

Miller and Shellabarger originated and reside in the Midwest and it is notable that the formal qualities of their books and other artworks evidence both an endearment and a subtle critique of the persistent regional aesthetics of Chicago and Midwestern formalism.

Both Miller and Shellabarger are also (and primarily) represented (individually and as a collaborative group) by Western Exhibitions gallery.