Inkpunk Artworks

I had a great time yesterday at the St Patrick's Day SLAM at the Burren. I chatted with a lot of interesting people, had a lot of people sign up for my mailing list, and I got to trade with a vendor! I was given a wonderful mini painting by Brian of Inkpunk Artworks, and gave him a "Five Towns" poster. When I put them together, they looked surprisingly related:

In the mission statement on his blog, Brian mentions, "I'm finding that there is indeed a universal place where art and science, the sacred and the mundane can meet, in certain forms and colors that seem to appeal to us unconsciously on a variety of levels, and hope to take this exploration further." That's very related to how I feel about map drawing -- I approach it scientifically or algorithmically, but somehow the fractal form of a map has fairly universal aesthetic appeal. Brian's paintings remind me that when I was studying aesthetics, some of the basic findings were that people prefer centered images and round images. I always discounted this as overly simplistic, but I'm finding more and more that there's a thing for circles in art and studio jewelry. I sometimes make fun of this with my maps, drawing illogical traffic circles for purely aesthetic appeal, or making ridiculous spiral roads. But it seems there is something to that design after all.

Somerville Open Studios - Save the Date

I will be participating in Somerville Open Studios again this year, and again at the Armory (191 Highland Avenue). The event is April 30th and May 1st. I hope that everyone will be able to come!

I will also have three drawings in a show at Bloc 11 in Union Square (11 Bow Street). The exhibition will be up from March 14 to May 3, with an opening reception on March 14th from 6:30-8pm catered by the cafe. Put this information on your Google Calendar with this button:

Metropolitan Museum of Art

I was in New York last weekend, and on Sunday I took some visitors to see the Met.

Francesco Guardi, Fantastic Landscape (c. 1760)

Anthonis van den Wijngaerde, View of Rome (c. 1540)

Henry Lerolle, The Organ Rehearsal 

Ancient Egyptian stamps

Pillar in the Greek and Roman Art court

Floral pattern on a suit of armor

Water-Resist Map Timelapse

After my last water-resist map experiment, I decided to make one with finer lines and brighter colors. I took photos after each step of painting and drawing masking lines to show the process.

The last photo is of the almost-completed map with the yellow masking fluid still on. After removing it, the finished map looked like this (as hung on the wall at First Friday):

I was going to add some pen lines afterwards, but the piece ended up being so colorful that I thought they might get lost. Next time I'll tone it down a little bit more, so there's more of a tonal difference between the river and the land space.

First Friday Photos

First Friday last night was wonderful. It was great to be able to show so much work in one place, and I got a lot of great responses to both the maps and the pop-ups. I was especially grateful to the other artists in the building who came by to see my work and give their critiques. Here are some photos of the event for those of you who weren't able to attend.

People looking at the work:

There were some dogs in one of the studios down the hall, and they wandered through every so often, padding by the art and circling the snacks table, just like regular open studios visitors!

 Someone told me the waterways in the maps looked like this awesome effect she'd gotten by applying rubbing alcohol to a store receipt:

The best part about being in the building was getting my other artist/gallerist friends to come and critique my work.

Resist Maps

I recently went to the ICA and got to see the Mark Bradford exhibit. It got me excited about the idea of introducing map imagery to paintings using resist techniques. I first tried cutting masking tape into little "blocks" and placing them in city-like formations, but it didn't work too well. Not only was it a bit too difficult to place them accurately, but they didn't actually resist water fully enough, and it was hard to get them into a shape that read as a city and not just a grid. They kept reminding me of old-style telephone keypads.

Watercolor wash over tape:

 After removing tape:

Then I tried using some watercolor masking fluid I had used for things like clouds in an earlier series. Because the fluid dries into rubber so quickly, it was hard to paint fine enough lines, so the effect was more like batik than the spindly city lines I'm more used to. If I could get finer lines, though, I think it would be effective, since it did resist the watercolor very well.

For the next one I started by putting down rivers of blue wash, and then drew the roads around them and painted "neighborhoods" of blocks using successive washes of green and brown. Once I was done painting, the original blue shapes were almost gone, but when I removed the dried masking fluid the river boundaries thus revealed helped to bring back the overall shape of the river. I like how that worked a lot, because the organic origins of city plans is something I'm always interested in conveying.

 

 I would probably want to continue by making a larger version of the last experiment, with a finer brush. Any other ideas for things I should try?

Dionysus Earrings

A long time ago I discovered that I could string seed beads onto wire and wind them up into little bunches of grapes. I made a few pins and started on a necklace, but found that it was too likely to get caught on things. I recently realized that the twiggy earrings I've been making would also work well with the grape motif, and tried making a couple. I think they turned out pretty well, but you'd definitely have to keep all hair and clothing clear of the adorable little tendrils.

First Friday in the South End

Thanks to my amazing friends Marion and JB, I will be participating in First Friday next month in their studio space! First Friday is a monthly open studio event in the South End that also includes gallery openings and other fun stuff. I will be at the 450 Harrison Ave studio building in studio #223B, and I'll be showing mostly original map drawings and large-scale pop-up cities. I don't really show these pieces outside of exhibitions any more, and certainly not all together like this, so it will be a good opportunity to see the full spread of my current work.

Add this event to your Google Calendar -

Nighttime Map Experiments

Recently I've been trying to figure out how to make compelling nighttime maps. So far I haven't really been very pleased with any of them. I suspect that is because what interests me in drawing maps is the way people lay out their individual lives around geography, and when streetlights and headlights are the only visible features in the landscape, it becomes a lot less interesting in that regard. I still think cities at night are beautiful aesthetically, but that alone is not really enough to make them interesting.

I first started drawing lines of dots with a gold paint pen on black paper. Then I tried using gouache on a tiny paintbrush using the same technique:

The lines of dots start to look more like interlocking spiderwebs than the maps I usually draw. I tried doing one on lighter paper as well, using different colors for the city centers that melded as they got out towards the suburbs:

Then I tried covering a canvas with black paint and painting lines of gouache dots on that. I think this has some potential for interesting topography effects, but that would also make it harder to paint precisely:

So far I had been doing only lines of dots, which is the general aesthetic effect of aerial nighttime cityscapes, but pretty removed from the way I usually draw maps. So I tried using a similar technique with a metallic pen on black paper:

I like the effect (it's super shiny in real life!), but now it's farther from a realistic depiction of either day or night. 

I'm thinking of giving up on this project by now, but would love to know if anyone has any better ideas. Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Twiggy Floral Earrings

I started making these earrings as a slightly easier-to-wear alternative to my twiggy floral necklaces:

Recently I've been making more sparkly ones in the spirit of the snowy season. They've also gotten a little more elongated as I experiment with making them more twiggy and gnarled:

Unfortunately my stock is always fairly low, since they're very popular at craft fairs. I will have more at my next craft fair, which will be February 12th at the Burren in Davis Square. Stop by then to get inspired for Valentine's Day!