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.