Mayflies of the driftless region

Description:	Dry Fly Entomology by Frederic M. Halford, published in London in 1897, was the inspiration for Mayflies of the Driftless Region. Halford, the Victorian innovator and popularizer of modern fly-fishing, scientifically described and surveyed the principal British mayflies of his time, but he did not claim his work as a comprehensive entomological treatise. Instead, Dry Fly Entomology was aimed at providing anglers with a basic, working understanding of the nature of aquatic insects. Mayflies of the Driftless Region can make no such claim; it is not a field guide. Instead, it is a study of mayflies by an artist.I began this project with little practical knowledge of mayfly entomology. It was not the information in Halford’s Dry Fly Entomology that caught my attention, but rather the detailed wood engravings that illustrated it. While Mayflies of the Driftless Region may provide useful information for fishermen and women of similar naïveté, the essence of the book is art. I have created 13 depictions of mayflies, color wood engravings with each hue printed from a separate block of end-grain maple. These images are the result of careful microscopic study of specimens collected from streams near my home in rural Wisconsin.Entomologist Clarke Garry, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, has written text to accompany each of the images. Professor Garry documents the series of taxonomic steps involved in the formal scientific identification of each of the specimens. In the context of a scientific journal, these identifications would likely be dry and difficult reading for most of us. However, in the pages of a finely printed book, the poetic nature of the language can be appreciated. Sometimes Dr. Garry would encounter a problem in taking a specimen to species, and, being a scientist, speculation was not an option. I urged him to make notes as to why a particular species determination proved elusive. For the final two specimens in the book, taxonomy is absent: the text is all notes. His final note: Taxonomy is an extremely dynamic discipline. I thought you might be interested in knowing that Ephemeerella inermis has, as of Jacobus and McCafferty (2003), been revised to Ephemerella excrucians.Science is fluid, like everything else. The scientist, and the artist, do basically the same thing: we observe the world around us, and record our observations as best we can.--Statement from artists website (accessed August 30, 2018).400 copies printed on Zerkall paper by Gaylord Schanilec. A special edition of fifty copies is bound in full calf by Jill Jevne, and contained in a slipcase of her design ... A limited edition of 300 copies is bound in quarter goat by Gregor Campbell. Fifty copies are left in sheets for custom binding. The Bembo Monotype was composed by hand by Gaylord Schanilec, with some machine composition by Michael Bixler--Colophon.I-ART: Library has copy no. 202, signed by the artist.
Origin:	2005
Created By:	Schanilec, Gaylord
Publisher:	Stockholm, Wis. : Midnight Paper Sales, 2005.
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/BookArts/id/2768
Collection:	Herron Library Fine Press and Book Arts Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	Mayflies Color wood engravings United States 21st century. Typefaces (Type evidence) Bembo (Monotype) Prospectuses Wisconsin 21st century. quarter brown leather and green boards, handmade Zerkall paper, 14 color wood engravings (13 specimen plates plus a microscope)

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