M12

Josh Garrett-Davis, Margo Handwerker, Chris Sauter and Richard Saxton [eds.]

‘Objects gain traction at scale and through texture. And the Center Pivot Library has traction. Small records and small books reveal vistas and boundless maps. Vinyl and paper and MDF, grooves and glue and grain—get it.’ - John Fenn III, Head of Research and Programs, American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress

The Center Pivot Library is a five-book, five-record collection that contains the following: Cool Pastoral Splendor, An Equine Anthology, This Road Leads to Nowhere, Future Rural Archive and Star Route 1. All published by Last Chance Press and Jap Sam Books in the last years. The library includes collaborative materials collated from M12’s studio on the Eastern Plains of Colorado (2010-2016). M12 with Daniel Bachman, Anna Bierbrauer and Sarah Schultz, Temple Grandin, Wes Janz, Mary Rothlisberger, Kurt Wagner and many others. Edited by Josh Garrett-Davis, Margo Handwerker, Chris Sauter and Richard Saxton, with a beautiful design by Peter de Kan.

‘The Center Pivot Library is a treasure trove of beyond-the-box takes by artists and writers and residents on little-considered aspects of rural culture in the West. Unexpected, fun, and challenging, these small artists' books and records will tantalize the eye and the intellect.’- Lucy R. Lippard, author of Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics and Art in the Changing West

M12 was recently awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, included in The Rural (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art), ed. Myvillages (The MIT Press, 2019) and participated in the The Rural Assembly: Contemporary Art and Spaces of Connection at Whitechapel Gallery in London (June 20–22, 2019). 

‘The collection of writings, images, and sounds in the Center Pivot Library defies the easy stereotypes of rural America. In turning away from the Walmarts and MAGA caps that have become such familiar shorthand, M12’s collection highlights both the wild and the tamed: punks and postmasters, horses and archives. Connected by star routes and strips of blacktop, communities, histories, and landscapes emerge from the fog of our preconceptions, revealing a rich and complex ecology in the center of the country.’ - Mimi Zeiger, Los Angeles–based critic and curator