Sentimentary Rock — Sally Clegg

Sentimentary Rock is a series of compositions created from the University of Michigan’s rock monument at the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and Hill Street in Ann Arbor. This colorful composite material has been accumulating at the base of the iconic limestone boulder since the mid 1950’s, when students began a tradition of painting it in acts of protest, creativity, and ritual, sometimes multiple times per week. Akin to byproducts of industry such as “Fordite” (collectable chunks of automotive overspray sometimes called ‘Detroit agate’), Wolverinite includes thousands of layers. Tiny pieces have been collected, sliced, sealed, assembled, and macro-photographed to create this series of archival pigment prints.

Some Wolverinite contains lead paint. The material was collected and processed using strict safety protocols, including respiratory protection and sealed encapsulation in resin. Lead paint was banned for residential use in the United States in 1978, but remains unregulated in over 70 countries today. It is the leading environmental cause of childhood neurodevelopmental damage worldwide, responsible for an estimated 1 in 3 cases of intellectual disability and contributing to cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, and premature death in adults. Ten percent of sales from the Sentimentary Rock series are donated to LEEP (Lead Exposure Elimination Project), an evidence-based nonprofit working to eliminate lead paint globally.

All archival pigment prints in the series exist in limited editions. Please email for purchase inquiries: sally.clegg@gmail.com