Over the past few years, I have collected these smaller pieces of paper, most from the edges of the street, under an old desk in an abandoned house, behind a cabinet in an old warehouse. Many of them have been distressed by age, wind, water, sand, salt, being chewed on by insects, mice, you name it. After witnessing how nature has acted on these papers, I decided to assist in the process and do some of my own aging, adding to the process. Some papers were left in a creek, some taken out into the desert to be blown by the sand and wind for weeks, and some papers I placed in my own hands and ground down with sand and grit. Each stack contains about 20-25 pieces of paper, and each one tells an individual story: the closer you get, the more little details begin to pop out and become apparent. Even though the paper is man made and comes from the civilized world, the collected and distressed paper stacks have a greater likeness to lichen, agates, and other elements found in the natural world.