Photographer Dana Montlack‘s images from her newest body of work, “Sea of Cortez,” are currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through January 12, 2014. “Sea of Cortez” references John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez (The Viking Press, 1951). “Steinbeck’s book recounts his six-week expedition through the Gulf of California with marine biologist Ed Rickets,” Joseph Bellows Gallery said in a statement. “Part intertidal taxonomy, part ecological travelogue, the book considers themes of home, mapping and environmental harmony. Working with scientists and staff of U.C. San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Birch Aquarium, Montlack selected and photographed specimens and charts from the waterways Steinbeck explored.” Monlack says in a statement on her website, “I magnify the elements then juxtapose them in a myriad of ways which resonates with its own particular energy, its own expression. My process relies greatly on the layering of transparent photographic images.” These colorful kaleidoscopic images bring Steinbeck into the twenty-first century.