Joyce Kozloff’s exhibition at the D. C. Moore Gallery in New York, Girlhood, ends tomorrow. (It’s also online.) Kozloff is a mixed-media artist whose work regularly blends the cartographic, the political and the decorative; in Girlhood the media she incorporates are her own childhood drawings.

Kozloff discovered folders containing her carefully preserved grade school art during the emotional process of packing up and closing her parents’ house after their deaths. Her occasionally phantasmagorical and meticulously painted archaic charts offer a dialogue between the youthful wonderment preserved in her elementary school drawings and adult geographical knowledge. These works bear a riveting similarity to her oeuvre of the last 25 years – maps, charts, decorative flourishes, information organized in graphs, and vignettes that expand the worlds depicted.

More on the exhibition from the New York Times and the Villager. [The Map as Art/WMS]

Previously: Kozloff’s Exterior and Interior Cartographies; Envisioning Maps.

Sara Drake’s 3D maps are a vibrantly coloured, whimsical combination of model-making, painting and sculpture.

I can normally be found carving miniature buildings from balsa wood and bandaging up the resultant scalpel wounds—or with my hands buried deep in wallpaper paste, as I papier mache the map base.

The maps are all hand-built and painted with acrylics, which give great vibrancy and long-lasting colour. The making process is pretty unique and combines a number of different artistic processes. I also use a huge range of materials—both new and recycled and can frequently be found head-first in a skip digging for special treasure! I am always looking for new and exciting techniques and materials to experiment with.

[Maps on the Web]

Ottawa-based artist Stuart Arnett creates works of art by drawing and painting directly on topo maps and nautical charts—“a mixed medium art form that I have named ‘Artistic Cartography,’” he says. “This combines a geographical map with graphite, Staedtler Marker and paint. This art form allows the subject matter to be paired with its natural habitat.” Giclée prints and originals are available via his website. [World of Maps]

Personal Geographies is a short guide to making maps about personal subjects using the techniques of mixed-media artwork. Let me unpack that a bit. Mixed media involves combining several different art forms: paint, pen and ink, photography, collage; different materials and textures. Berry, lists as supplies a number of different kinds of paper and cardstock; pencils, crayons and paints; adhesives; tools; and embellishments like ribbons.

These are the raw materials. Berry chooses as her theme so-called personal geographies, broken up into three chapters: maps of the self, in which the personal is mapped to pictures of the head, the hand, the heart or the body; maps of personal experiences, such as trips; and art pieces made from real and fictional maps. Each lavishly illustrated chapter gives sample projects with step-by-step instructions; each chapter also collects map projects from a number of different artists to show you what else might be possible.

I received an electronic review copy of this book.

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