LITTERED WAYS

In the mid-eighties, Loker published a book of wood-block prints of paths through the landscape entitled “Littered Ways.” He wrote a poem for the preface that gives us a textual foundation for considering his work during this decade.

The way it is
The way I think it is
The way it could be
The way I think it could be
The way it should be
The way I want it to be
The way I think I want it to be.

The way it was
The way I thought it was
The way it could have been
They way I thought it could have been
The way it should have been
The way I thought it should have been
The way I wanted it to be
The way I thought I wanted it to be

This poem reveals how the artist is working in yet another mode of abstraction, one in which a generic landscape feature could carry many metaphorical meanings.