Resident Artist:
John Williams
Maps are catalysts. They enable us to forecast ourselves into the future, remember the past, or signify particular cultural traditions. As a representation, maps offer a specific point of view. Often we note the grand traditions in our culture but ignore those that play a role in our daily lives. As a continual tourist, I observe these experiences as fundamental to our collective understanding. Documenting events, spaces, or relationships helps us understand who we are and how we fit in.
Our collective culture is built on the foundation of storytelling. I produce objects and want viewers and users to create individual experiences through personal interpretation. Rotating cylinders reference the contemplative nature of Buddhist prayer wheels, billboards that mark the landscape, and globes. This new body of work explores the kinetic landscape. While most things tend to stay the same in our day-to-day lives, blocks of time reveal changes that refresh perspectives. Incorporating elements of time in my work highlights this constant and unstoppable shift. Presenting objects with responsive qualities allows progressions to unfold at a chosen rate. The globes incorporate implied lines in the form of ocean currents and flight paths. Linking one impulse to another and then another leads the viewer on a seemingly endless path. The sense of discovery and anticipation frees us from preconceptions. Maps have always been interactive tools full of expectancy.
Mapping and its tools are similar to any scientific pursuit. Usually we read maps on flat surfaces, but when projected in the round these flat images distort. The fact remains that all maps are abstractions of both the natural and the man made world, and that our interpretation dictates an object’s relevance. I employ ceramic replicas of actual objects to preserve a particular moment. Clay has the inherent property of memory—an ability to record. In fact, some of the earliest maps were drawn in clay. This preservation halts the story of an object in mid-sentence and asks the viewer to finish it.
The patterns I use are adopted from both the real landscape and inventions, which describe particular events, spaces, or relationships. I have used architectural perspectives, circuit designs, farming patterns, city grids, elevation models, landscape horizons, water shapes, and political boarders in my drawings. Drawing with an x-acto knife in damp clay, I cut into the material, isolating one area from another or carving a path. Color shifts in surface treatments amplify and identify constructs in my compositions.
The endless interpretation and abstraction of natural surroundings and cultural traditions constitutes my interest in art and mapping.
