This won't be the first time I pulled a UFO from the basket and fiddled it into something with a backstory. A few of my more successful pieces were days away from an industrial shredder when I set them aside and came back with fresh eyes.
All I know right now is that I need something to hold on to and don't have the desire to start anything from scratch. This piece from sometime in the last five years has a little promise.
Of course it was the blue and gold that pulled me in first, but what was she trying to say with all the trixie little stitched passages? What was the tight focus about?
Was it language or placemaking?
I'm going to lean into mapping. I love maps. I used to have a glove box full of them. When I was young, a neighbor who worked for State Farm used to give out their annual road atlas. I used to read it like I was going somewhere and didn't want to be followed.
Then, once I got my licence, I found out that there were a lot of roads and places that didn't get onto the printed page.
My room was papered with maps pulled from the never ending stream of National Geographics I got from wherever they were dumped.
When I lived in Provincetown, I bought a stack of outdated nautical maps and eventually wallpapered the bathroom of my first solo apartment. Same colors as these only faded away to whispering.
4 comments:
gotta confess I've been sorely tempted more than once by the Lord of the Rings style rubber stamp sets with mountains and forests among other things ... how cool to do something like that in stitch (and what was it about NatGeo maps ... I was likewise fascinated, though not to the point of wallpaper as I was far to rule-bound to ever think of such a thing)
A few years ago- a decade or TWO??? the Librarians gifted me an Ancient Atlas of the World (me rather than the dumpster). To use in collage or whatever else I tried to do. I just stood up and looked to the far wall...there it is...waiting. I made some glorious bookmarks as gifts...
These old nautical maps were very muted. Subtle.
Deb~ Yes, what is it about maps? I will add to your words and the other comments that any book, any book at all with a map in the front/back cover is outstanding in my book! My son decorated his first apartment with maps, all kinds. I've been adding them into the glue books that I've been making. I love this map of yours and your language of map making. Be well.
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