Mark left Philadelphia on the afternoon of the 15th for Richmond, Virginia. Dana has since reported that the drive was a smooth four and a half hours and that she and Mark arrived in good health. Included were these photos from the day of departure and a copy of Mark's departure speach.

. . .

"Ladies and gentlemen, friends, family, people of Philadelphia, fellow Pennsylvanians and those of you who have merely come to gawk, I come before you to bid you farewell, for my departure is imminent. Therefore I shall be brief in my remarks as the clock ticks away and the sun shall not dally for us, and we intend to be south of Richmond on this day.

"It has been deemed by the fine scholars of this esteemed institution, by the wisdom of the holders of Philadelphia's cultural pursestrings, and but the cautious connoisseurship of curator Julie Courtney that I travel to the southern territories of these United States to procure knowledge. This journey, taken in several stages and embarked upon with my faithful companion Dana Sherwood, will undoubtedly be one of hardship and great peril; however, we undertake this commission with utter determination of success.

"What, you may ask, will this success look like? What will it mean? While it is impossible for me to predict with precision the outcome of my endeavor, I am certain that I shall articulate a sensible understanding of the southern landscape. For if we Americans possess mastery of an artistic genre, it surely must be the travelogue. While we can appreciate the literary importance of this genre in works as wide ranging as the accounts of Lewis and Clark to those of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, it is not clear what this genre means for sculpture.

"While painters like Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt vividly respond to the travelogue, as do our most esteemed photographers like Danny Lyons, Ansil Adams and Walker Evans, what about sculptors? In film, the road movie represents this form in the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby films, Easy Rider, Peewee's Big Adventure and the recent films of Gus Van Sant. Yet we are still at a loss as to how to represent the transformative experience of travel through the material form of expression that is sculpture. It is my intent to vigorously interrogate this question by braving the wilds of North Florida and west to the Mississippi River, and other areas yet unknown to myself.

"I shall shadow the travels of fellow artist William Bartram. Bartram was a man of uncommon courage and a talent and intellect of formidable skill, particularly with regard to writing and draftsmanship. While in both categories I lack Bartram's eloquence, we do share the artist's vision. Therefore I pledge to do my very best to select, collect, preserve and artfully arrange the numerous natural objects and artifacts of material culture I encounter on this journey, with the purpose of display here in the house of Bartram for visual pleasure and intellectual edification of the people of Philadelphia. This charge I take on with awesome gravity. I shall explore regions remote and unknown to myself returning to this very noble institution to report upon the wonderful nature of the region, as well as on the curious ways, bizarre rituals and marvelous material culture of the humanity I encounter."

"Deeply do I thank those who have assisted in my commission and I truly hope to do as little wrong as possible in fulfillment of my duty."

- M