Bad Luck, Hot Rocks: Professor’s Book Published and Reviewed by LATimes

The College is pleased to announce the publication of the new book Bad Luck, Hot Rocks by Ryan Thompson, assistant professor of art and design, and the wonderful review of the book in the Los Angeles Times.

Thompson’s book, co-authored by Phil Orr, is a collection of photos of petrified “rocks” from the Petrified Forest in the Painted Desert of Northeast Arizona, and facsimiles of some of the hundreds of “conscience letters” people have left over the years after returning the pieces of wood they had taken, a common practice but prohibited under national park regulations.

Read a short introduction to the book.

Ryan explained that due to the unknown provenance of the pieces of returned petrified wood, they can’t be scattered back in the park since doing so would spoil those sites for research purposes.

“They are instead added to the park’s ‘conscience pile,’ which sits alongside a private gravel service road,” explained Thompson, who recently shared more about the process of writing the book. 

Where did the idea for the book originate?

“I first encountered the ‘conscience letters’ on a research trip in Arizona during the summer of 2011. There was a small display of the letters at the visitors’ center and I was immediately taken by the letters because of their humor, heartbreak, and humility. The content dovetailed nicely with some of my other research interests, and I knew that I wanted to work with the archive and the returned rocks in some capacity.

“The following summer I returned to the park with my good friend and collaborator, Phil Orr, to work with the conscience letter collection and to photograph some of the returned rocks from the park’s ‘conscience pile.’ The book features facsimiles of letters, photos of returned rocks, and an interview with the park’s museum curator, Matthew Smith.”

Do you have a favorite letter, and if so, why?

“I really like the ‘sad face’ letter. The way the circles are traced and the carefulness with which the tears are drawn gets me every time.

I also really like the letter that reads, ‘They are beautiful, but I can’t enjoy them—they weigh like a ton of bricks on my conscience. Sorry.’ It’s beautifully concise and poetic.

Explain the “Department of Natural History.”

“When I was in graduate school, one of my professors mentioned that my work was like a natural history museum—in the sense that I seemed interested in re-presenting information in new and aesthetic ways. Soon after that conversation, I bought the domain name for my portfolio website: departmentofnaturalhistory.com.

“Since then, the Department of Natural History moniker has been a filter through which all my work passes. For better or worse, my research interests take me in lots of different directions (like a crow living in a chrome-plated world) and the ‘Department’ helps me make decisions about how and where I should spend my time and energy in the studio. It’s also a way of branding (for lack of a better word) my studio practice so gallerists, curators, and publishers have a framework with which to understand what I do.”