Bed Bush Ruins features two bodies of work. The first body of work is based on the artist’s observation and perception of familiar objects. In creating his own version of these objects, the artist imposes a meaning onto the innate qualities of their forms. Bush, for example, is a three dimensional life-size bush with leaves made out of wax. Each leaf is a semi-translucent painting of a different view of outer space so that Bush becomes a model of the Big Bang theory with the viewer on the outside trying to peer through the outer leaves to the origin of the universe.

The second body of work is comprised of several large-scale ruins built of Time, Life and National Geographic magazines. VanDerBeek glues the pages of the magazines together and then grinds down the surface as a means of scrambling world events chronicled in the periodicals. He then cuts into the surface to reveal or excavate composites of images enacting the possibility that images from 2005 could be from 1105. In this way the works become archeological archetypes, implying a place with no specific origin but one that represents the passing of time.