Road One is a collaborative work in progress between myself and award-winning writer, Kij Johnson. In 2018 Kij and I met in Iceland in October to drive the Ring Road, also known as Road One. In fact, the only through road in Iceland. At the end of the journey we had amassed thousands of words, photographs, and hundreds of sketches and quick paintings of the trip.
The question one may ask is: Does the world need one more book of photographs of Iceland? Our answer is a resounding yes. What we envision is a project that revisits W.H. Auden and Louis McNiece’s Letters from Iceland. This travelogue details not only Auden’s and McNiece’s travels in Iceland, but also contains fictionalized letters from a Lady Visitor.
We wondered why should there be a fictional Lady Visitor when we are real Lady Visitors. Our book is envisioned as a combination of our journal entries and conversations giving substance to the paintings and photographs. We see this as an illustrated travelogue dipping into not only beautiful images of Iceland, but humorous conversations, our thoughts on art and writing as developed during the trip, and of course as with all the best of buddy movies, it also the story of a decades old friendship that has grown richer with time.
