Studio Saturday - a useful trick for awkward division

Another batch of facemasks is underway -

Another recent project is "tracing my daily walks" - over the week it has taken a more definite shape and has reached what will probably be the furthest point south, which coincidentally lies just north of the point where the map changes scale. (I walk the walk without the street atlas to hand.)

As I (temporarily) labelled the areas (Highgate, Hornsey, Stoke Newington) I discovered that an entire quadrant lay empty (Tufnell Park, Camden Town) -

That was soon remedied -

The walks are a way of defining "my local area" - places I could reach on foot. I worked out that the radius was just over two miles (45 minutes' steady walking) but that I was usually out on the streets for over two hours, tsk tsk too much "daily exercise"!

The random routes make interesting shapes ... perhaps the project will take its shape from these shapes? Sheer fabrics, overlaid perhaps? Printed areas defined through stencilling? Thinking of the latter, and longing to do quite a lot of woodblock cutting, I looked for some simple travel-lines that could be traced and cut -

It took several hours to trace, and this is the result of several hours' cutting (half a dozen podcasts). It's about a sixth of the tracing -

At one point in the week another project nearly got underway, one that needed a 30-page accordion book. The book took longer than expected and is still only half finished. Each strip of paper needed folding into sixths and was an inconvenient measurement for "doing the maths". If awkward division is something that ever happens to you, this geometrical method will be useful.

I had folded the strip in half so I needed thirds. 12 (inches) is easily divided by 3, so I put the end of the ruler in the corner of the paper and swung the ruler so the 12 hit the edge of the paper. (That made the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.) Then I marked the 8 and the 4 along the ruler. At this point you can draw your fold line with a set square or similar 90-degree tool, or you can repeat the measurement from another corner and line up the two dots.

The method works for any awkward division, fifths, sevenths, etc - just find a measurement that can easily be divided by 5, 7, etc and swing your ruler accordingly.

Drawing Tuesday

(Last week's work at the Brunei Gallery is on Sue's blog, here. )

A few days have passed since the Drawing Room summer school and Tuesday seems a good place for thinking about it.

Starting point, and outcome; it seems the "drawing" happened elsewhere!

Not sure what I expected - to be tackling "something" unexpected along with other people doing the same thing, and enjoying it, even though it might be a bit scary? To be exposed to other people's approaches, not just the tutors but the other participants. To be pushed out of my comfort zone. To "see" differently as a result. To improve my skills, with any luck.

Maybe that's a retrospective list, because all those things happened. What I didn't expect was to feel so tired & emotional so much of the time - blame it on the excitement of the day, and onthe daily commute!. Nor did I expect to feel so resistant - phew did I feel resistant to some of the things that were going on, but where did that come from? The briefs, or prompts, such as they were, were so open-ended, so elastic, there should have been no resistance: I could have done anything. And did; and that might have been the problem, for me ... a bit more direction, some on-the-mark feedback, a hint or two about being on the wrong track? Or maybe, being tired&emotional, I just didn't take it in.

I felt I was on the wrong track, chaotic and unfocussed. Yet this situation is about messing about and finding something (new?) that interests you, something to take forward later. What did I do? I went back to my cosy comfort zone, books. Perhaps (almost certainly!) I'd set this up by bring along a book-like map as my significant object.

After a day of "collecting" figurative images from other artists' work I was so unimpressed with my results that I needed to collect the originals, and out of my graphite chaos make a nice tidy book. Just a leporello ... floppy paper but nice hard covers. This object caused some astonishment - artists know about paper, but maybe not about its sculptural - and humdrum - possibilities?

On the last day we carried on with our "personal project". I'd figured out how the map's folding system worked, so that was one objective achieved. Also, something that I haven't been able to do for a while, I found myself just thinking about "crazy" possibilities and drilling down to something essential: a map of a city needs some sort of representation of streets. And I had just such a grid on hand, easily used via frottage. Which led to a bad habit surfacing: working in a frenzy at the last minute, rubbing as much paper as possible before leaving for class, and having to rush to get there.

Late Friday afternoon, as we set up for the "show&tell", that same bad habit had me determined to "finish off" all that paper and in using it up, some rather rudimentary work emerged.

At the last minute, there was no time to make the final fold!

That rush to finish, and hurrying to set up "a nice display", is one of the sources of my dissatisfaction, along with knowing that the work could have been more pared-down, less chaotic, more thoughtful, had I not squandered my time and energy through negativity about this&that throughout the day. I find myself focussed on the product rather than the process, but it's the process that's the valuable part.

I think the book format interested the others - there were some good questions about it - and I fantasise that some will use it a vehicle for their own work or, even better, look at artists books more closely.

I also fantasise about making "flat art" - on paper or canvas, is that "proper" art? - and can't quite accept that I'm more of a 3D person. 3D takes up space! ah but books, with their 2D/3D fluctuations, transcend this. 

So to sum up, although at this point I'm still bristling a bit with residual resistance, the gains are getting the upper hand over the pains. One of the books especially is ripe for development, and I'm eager to get on with that. Small learning points from the process are starting to emerge - for instance, I'm seeing tone everywhere, after a day of trying to achieve it. 

The first little book got a title: "Kolnische Kirchen". The basis is a map/diagram showing the proximity of the 12 romanesque churches in Cologne, and the medieval city walls. Photos were found on the internet, and on the other side are architectural footprints of some of them -

The other "finished" book (well, I'm not going to tamper with it, though it could be improved in many ways) juxtaposes plans and appearances and includes the Gothic-style Dom, famous symbol of the city, which appears on the cover of the original Falk map. If you've ever arrived in Cologne by train, you'll know how close the Dom is to the station, and how it overshadows this modern intrusion. Whereas the older churches have to be sought out.

Searching out the churches is one idea behind this, unfinished, map. Another is the red line, which would be better as "the red thread" - a peregrination, a pilgrimage, or just wayfaring or tourism - connection, connection, connection.... What will go in the blank areas - images, words, or ...?

On Friday afternoon I ended my explanation of my "objects" with the phrase "the mapness of maps" and this simplification is something to keep in mind when working further with this format.

postscript: "I know what I think when I hear myself talk." Writing this has uncovered so much for me! It's good to "talk" to yourself about what you've done, or are doing.

Rock map

Found in a book ... in August 2013. After all that time, I have no idea which book!

"Everywhere I look I see maps, out of habit."

Edward Quin's historical atlas

A first encounter with the historical atlas published in 1830 by Edward Quin was the highlight of the Works on Paper fair for me. (Though I was very tempted to buy a woodcut of geese by Watanabe Setei.)

"Historical Atlas in a Series of Maps of the "Known World" from 2348 BC to AD 1828"

The known world - known at the date the map represents - is shown emerging from dark clouds. What an amazing concept ... what a lot of black printing ink (aquatint). The clouds have splendid edges -

AD 912 - Dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne

These prints, which the gallerist suggested would look well on a staircase, getting ever darker as you ascended, were once part of a book, and I think they suit the book format better than being framed prints. As you turn the pages, you make the clouds disperse.

Fortunately we have youtube to show us this phenomenon - see it all happen in less than a minute here - and there's a gif of the sequence here. It starts with the deluge, and finishes with the Northwest Passage still undiscovered.

Quin's approach to cartography followed a trend from the 18th century trend that tried to present historical change as a consistent and unified whole. His innovation is shown in the use of dark clouds to obscure the unknown areas of the world

The work was intended to educate schoolchildren about the history of the world, giving a rapid view of all great political changes in human society. Of particular note are the maps showing the Garden of Eden and the Discovery of America. The final map depicts the 'End of the General Peace' in 1828.

Called to the bar in 1820, Quin died at the age of 34, in the year his atlas was published. It went through several editions.

Background to grids

Aspects of past work that feed into the "grids" idea

Irregular grids of city maps
and by extension, maps of museums with their structure of rooms

Are portolan charts grids?

Gridded pseudo-maps, reminiscent of kuba cloth patterns

gridded book pages

gridded quilting

Images found on the internet that feed into my gridded, structural thinking -

Karen Goetzinger (via)

Gridded facade of the Bodleian Library (via)

A grid by Gego (via)

source lost, but isn't it a wonderful structure?

a multiplicity of shapes within the gridded roof of the Great Court at the British Museum

Gridded drawings by Clare Smith - see more here

Deleuze conceives of the grid as territorialised "State Space", inside which movement becomes fixed and tribal. Hmm ... how to break that fixity, disorganise things a bit?

Imaginary geography

A gremlin, or a senior moment, or simple carelessness, put a wrong city in a subject line of a message to a group (that shall remain nameless, but you know who you are) ... and I have offended people who live in any or all of the places mentioned in the body of the message. Yes, that's complicated to figure out ... and I have no excuse for slipping up in this way ... and people have every right to complain ...

It probably won't stop me from doing the same thing again sometime in the future. Moments get more senior all the time, and the gremlins are always with us.

Silver lining is that my geographical non-savvy, in conjunction with the "folded maps" project that remains hidden from my increasingly frantic search, brought the phrase "imaginary geography" to mind - as a title for a quilt (or painting?).

Searching for images on the internet, as you do, found several inspirations:

And with it "the hyper-architecture of desire" (via)

An Atlas of Radical Cartography - maps and essays about social issues - "the map is inherently political"

The Land of Oz (via, a blog of imaginary maps)

The serious side (from wikipedia): "The concept of imagined geographies has evolved out of the work of Edward Said, particularly his critique on Orientalism. In this term, "imagined" is used not to mean "false" or "made-up", but rather "perceived". It refers to the perception of space created through certain images, texts or discourses."

Some well-documented imaginary places are here (and elsewhere).

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980, reprinted) covers only places on Earth.

By Erik Demazieres (via)

A "capriccio" by Piranesi (via)

Monday miscellany

"Dream mapping" by Susan Hiller - part of an article, or rather a series of pictures, on how artists are reinventing the atlas (here).

***

Bronagh Kennedy's hand-drawn map of London is based on 1914 maps (via)

***

The Rubbish Collection is the new interactive exhibition at the Science Museum. Artist Joshua Sofaer invites you to participate in collecting, sorting, photographing and documenting one month’s worth of rubbish produced by the Science Museum, in order to create a visual day-to-day archive of rubbish. Free, until 14 September.

***

What is a happy building? Here are 10 such... including "Hortus conclusus" (2009 - an enclosed garden), imo the best of the Serpentine's annual pavilions.

***

Lovely sequence of photos of an old couple in their garden is here. The photos were taken by Ken Griffiths of the Sunday Times, starting in 1973.

***

Quilt of the week is by Benedicte Caneill - this is a detail -

See the entire quilt (Units 32: Jazzy Blues) here.

***

Sad sign (via)

***

Lego sign, Regent Street (via) - it'll be up till 15 July as part of "year of the bus"

A sidelight to "year of the bus" is a podcast by Joe Kerr,  a historian and tutor at the Royal College of Art - it's about why arts education should be viewed on an equal footing as other, more traditional subjects. Joe is also a bus driver, and he talks about which London bus routes he most enjoys driving and why London is bucking the trend of bus travel becoming less popular. Get the podcast here. (Interesting info about student loans and debts, too.)

***

The inventor of Kevlar, the lightweight fibre used in bulletproof vests and body armour, has died aged 90. Stephanie Kwolek was a chemist at the DuPont company in Wilmington, Delaware, when she invented the stronger-than-steel fibre in 1965. It was initially intended to be used in automobile tyres.

***

It costs £53 to fix a pothole. £168m will help to fix some three million potholes in England by March 2015. "A drop in the bucket" says the Local Government Association.

Monday miscellany - a little early

(oh DRAT - this was supposed to appear on Monday. I pressed the wrong button, and now everything is out of synch! Never mind, more to come ... later ...)

Love those maps of London! This one is by, and available from, Ollie O'Brien -

It's based on buildings - leaving unbuilt areas white. So you have to use "negative spaces" like parks to find your location, or places you know. (Maps aren't always about getting from here to there.)

The  1900 Golding press that printed suffragettes' handbills - there's a 1900 Wharfdale too; it
printed their posters - both are leaving east London for a new home in Norfolk. Read about the
last days at WF Arber & Co in Spitalfields Life

Another urban nuisance?  - first the foxes, now the deer -

See the pix and read the story here. They're taking advantage of parks and green spaces - and why not?

In the 1890s London had lots of orchards - the fruit was important in feeding the capital -

London still has many sites with fruit trees - including new ones planted by the London Orchard Project -

It seems that some orchards planted in the last decade are being neglected, and the project has stepped in to apply for funding to care for them. To deal with the urban fruit going unharvested, on streets and in gardens, local "scavenging" groups have been formed, often as part of environmentally friendly collectives.

Of course you'd want to know if there's a new orchard near you... My nearest is at Haden Court, planted in 2010 -

Exciting news - London is to have its first Cat Cafe, on Bethnal Green Rd. Food is prepared in an area inaccessible to the cats, that's fine, but I'm not sure about having them walking around on the tables... still, a cat's gotta do what a cat's gotta do, and that includes ignoring human rules.

Cats on the ipad - watch out David Hockney!

Catch the cute video here.