New Water Resist Maps

I recently came across a call for artwork to be shown in a store in Central Square, and decided to make something large and colorful to submit to work with the space. I ended up with two 15"x20" water-resist maps (like this one, which sold last summer - I haven't worked in this style since).

The first one I tried was just a radial streets pattern:

Removing the rubbery strings of rubber-resist:

and the second one I tried to build around a central fabricated (maybe too fake-looking) river:

I called the first one "Strata" and the second "Sediment", to relate to the way they were built up in layers. The finished pieces:

They look better smaller! In real life they're 15"x20" and framed in 18"x24" frames. I brought "Sediment" to an art crit last weekend and displayed it together with the first water resist piece I tried (the one that's still in my possession) to ask why the first smaller one was more visually successful than the larger, more recent one, which ostensibly would have more experience behind it. The consensus seemed to be that there still wasn't enough experience; I had to get used to the large scale and the materials before it would look better. I guess the smaller one was just chance! Here's the setup we critiqued:

In the end, both "Strata" and "Sediment" got accepted into the exhibition, which will be at Boomerangs in Central Square starting July 16th. For a full list of my current and upcoming shows, you can always check out my website.