The Crossroads of Curiosity is comprised of four individual paintings, together they are epic in the sweep of inter-related themes. Originally created for Burning Man 2014, Normal used Victorian Era book illustrations exclusively from the digitised collection of the British Library to create the artwork. Beginning as black and white collages, the four pieces were developed into 8’ x 20’ (2.5 x 6 m) lightbox murals that were arrayed around the base of the Burning Man effigy to support the 2014 festival’s theme, “Caravansary”.

The Paintings

Below are the four paintings: "Ostrischizocracy", "Purcogitoresque", "Conflamingulation", and "Curioscillotropy". These four paintings begun as collages composed exclusively from the British Library's online collection of 19th Century Book Illustrations, often referred to as "The Million Image Release".The collages were made in Adobe Photoshop and then printed out at a scale of 3' x 8' onto polypropylene backlit media (a signmaker's medium). The faintly printed collages were painted over with acrylic paints. The finished color paintings were printed out in sections to equal a scale of 2.5 x 6 m (8' x 20').

The large prints were framed in plexiglas. Large redwood frames were built by carpenter Andrew Spalding. At Burning Man the frames were further embellished with CNC cut lattices fabricated by Jack "Opa" Haye of Burning Man. The "jewel box array" used at the British Library was built by Max Hunter with engineering support from Erik Kneer, SE.