Cartograph
2010

Cartography is simply the making of maps, but more specifically it can be described as the combination of geography and aesthetics for effectively communicating ideas. Having grown up in a family of scientists, one of whom is a practicing cartographer, it should come as no surprise that I have always had an affinity for collecting and creating maps of various kinds. Throughout life I have documented travels by marking roads taken in an oversized U.S. atlas, as well as on a wall-sized poster in my office. Additionally maps have long been integrated into many collages produced in artist journals for the symbolic effect of invoking a sense of travel, wanderlust, discovery and knowledge.
 
Works in this exhibition make use of map-like elements in a variety of forms and mediums, but all linked to notions of communicating ideas about the social landscape and mankind’s ecological impact on the earth. Beginning with excerpts from personal collage journals, I have branched out to making large-scale mixed media works displaying sociological and agricultural imagery. Moving to eastern North Carolina from Atlanta, Georgia in 2006 marked the first occasion I had lived in a rural region. The transition from an urban upbringing and aesthetic to the rural is manifested here in an investigation of how interstate commerce affects regional growers in an ever-shrinking global economy. Collages in the exhibition mix images of produce and farming, along with homes and buildings, juxtaposed with other urban and rural environs. As with my collage journals, these works are infused with stream-of-consciousness writing presented as meditations on the issues facing local farmers as agriculture becomes more regulated by government oversight.
 
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