Ed Ruscha
American, b. 1937

Pick, Pan, Shovel, 1980
Color lithograph

In this print, Ruscha places a mining pick and shovel in a crossed “X” formation with a gold pan in the center. The pick, pan, and shovel, favorite objects of Ruscha’s to depict, are set against a fading golden background. Together, these tools conjure an image of a distant American past, one of the California Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century where over 300,000 people traveled west in the hope of finding gold. At age 18, Ruscha made his own trek west from his home in Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work.

Courtesy of the Artist

Visual Description: This is a print, roughly 2 feet by 2 ½ feet, with a shovel and a miner’s pick crossed to form an “X” shape. In the top quadrant of the ”X” is a circular gold pan. The shovel, pick, and pan are varying shades of light gray and the pan has some light brown areas, almost like it is dirty. The background is a mustard-gold color that diffuses from the top to the bottom of the paper.