Placer Dome Mining
Researching company archives led to the design of a mural exploring the past, present and future of Placer Dome Mining.
Starting on the left are depicted: the dredge used on the Bulolo River in Papua, New Guinea (site of the company's first mine), photos of the airlift into the Bulolo, miners in an early Dome mine, a mineshaft headframe, a compass and a cross-section of a typical underground mine. The background is a mapping grid with geological anomalies delineated. The four major minerals produced by the company are represented by their atomic number and symbol.
The entrance to the boardroom is framed by the silhouetted benches of an open pit mine. The right side panel depicts a conveyor system feeding a coarse ore stockpile, a section of a flotation process flow sheet, and the future, symbolized by the globe of the earth and planets (the planets are core samples from a company mine which were sliced like salami and polished, then epoxied into holes cut in the glass). Standing at the extreme ends of the mural are steel drill bits from the Dome mine; on the left, rusted antique (the past), on the right, new (the future).
This project is a collaboration with Brian Baxter.