This Friday’s featured artist is Kathy Prendergast and the maps she transforms!
She’s brilliant at parodying conventional ideas about maps and their use as a means of orientation.
Her City Drawings below are based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities but consist only of lines.
I love the patterns and textures she creates with her delicate pencil lines.
She’s brilliant at parodying conventional ideas about maps and their use as a means of orientation.
Her City Drawings below are based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities but consist only of lines.
I love the patterns and textures she creates with her delicate pencil lines.
City Drawings Series: Tehran and London, 1997, pencil on paper, 12.2 x 8.3 inches each
In her Black Map series, Prendergast altered ordinary country maps by laboriously inking out all borders and roads, leaving only white dots, representing locations of individuals’ residences:
BLACK MAP SERIES (Ukraine), 2010, Ink on printed map, 37.3 x 54.1 inches
BLACK MAP SERIES (Ukraine), 2010, Ink on printed map, 37.3 x 54.1 inches
Prendergast’s computer-generated Lost Map omits all place names from this map of North America, except for those which include the word lost (like Lost Creek, Lost Island, and Lost Canyon):
Lost, 1999, Digital print on paper, 34.8 x 70.8 inches, Collection of the Tate
In describing Lost Map and her plans for a future project, Prendergast writes:
For the last few years I have been researching place-names with the idea of producing an “Emotional Atlas of the World.” This atlas would show all the places in the world which have names connected with emotions, i.e., Lost Bay, Lonely Island, Hearts Desire, etc., rather than the conventional atlas which shows places of importance. The map Lost…is a variation on this theme, showing all the “lost” places in North America.
Find out more about Kathy Prendergast here.
TGIF!
Mary^
For the last few years I have been researching place-names with the idea of producing an “Emotional Atlas of the World.” This atlas would show all the places in the world which have names connected with emotions, i.e., Lost Bay, Lonely Island, Hearts Desire, etc., rather than the conventional atlas which shows places of importance. The map Lost…is a variation on this theme, showing all the “lost” places in North America.
Find out more about Kathy Prendergast here.
TGIF!
Mary^
