Gabi Wood

Critical Bedrock

Critical Bedrock is an archive of my record collection and, more abstractly, my memories. My record collection is something I am very connected to and allows me to connect to my parents. My mom and dad’s collection was handed down to me at a very fragile moment of my life and allowed me to focus on growing and expanding it into something bigger. Since then, I have added so many new records to it and I plan on gaining more and more throughout my life. Collecting has become a favorite hobby and the music I collect has been a consistent huge passion of mine that weaved its way into my interest in graphic design. Seeing the designs on all of the albums that I own and seeing the artwork created for bands fueled a passion in me. Now, I have a more expansive practice, but music is still at the forefront and that is what this book is meant to showcase.

Critical Bedrock is a physical symbol of what I am passionate about and serves as something I can carry with me and add to. Music is a powerful force that many have been touched by and I am grateful to have this collection as a force of my own. My collection makes me feel safe, accepted and protected. I want this book and posters to serve as a snapshot into my collection and design practice to see how much it will grow.

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Collage of overlapping images including a poster for the band Pulp, which has the name Pulp at the top in orange with “Different Class” in yellow below it. Under that is the tracklisting for the album. Other imagery on the poster includes a blue sky background with a hand reaching out to an orange and multiple orange peels surrounding it. Next to that is a poster for Blondie’s album Parallel Lines. It is bright red and includes large yellow text that says “Parallel Lines” and “Blondie” with multiple lines intersecting each other and the tracklist of the album. Next to that poster is one for the Television album Marquee Moon. It includes a gridded background and a checkerboard border in red and blue. It has “Television” at the top in Blue and “Marquee Moon” below it in red. It has a TV in red and blue with the tracklist on it with a cut out of the band in the corder. Below these images of posters is a scan of the front cover of my book, Critical Bedrock. It says “Critical Bedrock: An archive of records, reflection of the past” on the front cover with an image of records standing up on a record shelf in black and white. The back cover has a drawing of a record with the quote “Record collecting is an attempt to preserve both the past and memories of the past” - Jack Ellis.

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