“Collection of accumulated stains. Each day we mark our life together by leaving rings of coffee in the pages of this book.” – 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. As with many of Miller and Shellabarger’s pieces, this project, perhaps intentionally and humorously, extends the graphic aesthetics of Chicago formalism into subtle post-modern social and performative concerns. The piece also functions as an innovative asemic writing project, the casual coffee drinking leaves marks that suggest an unknown, perhaps alien, off-world language, that appears to have been extracted from a science fiction (or fact?) movie.