Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground. With slight modifications and changes, his original design is still the lingua franca of transporation mapping.
Our minds create maps of every place we go. Apparently all animals do this, not just us. And those cognitive maps are not necessarily accurate or drawn to scale. Like the iconic map of the London Tube designed in 1933 by an electrical draughtsman named Harry Beck, the best maps make a complex system comprehensible by eliminating information that isn’t essential and simplifying the schemata to mostly straight lines. Beck’s map is conceptual, not accurate, but it is the most famous and most emulated transportation map in the world.
There are emotional maps too. These are more complex charts than a transit system schemata or a topographic map of the terrain. For one thing they include the additional coordinate of time. The past is constantly linking and looping back into our present, and our memories of how things used to be are constantly being stretched taut by how those places change. The map of a life is layered, dense and highly specialized. Some friends share a layer or two, but this complex of overlays and connections ends up being a map only comprehensible to one person.
Visiting California is the inevitable return to the deep foundational grid of my personal map as well, the one formed by a childhood in the Bay Area and college years in Santa Cruz. As richly engaging as present tense California is, it is still for me just a glass floor atop the isometrics of the deep past.
I spent time with some extraordinary art and artists while I was there—Holly Downing, Ramah Commanday, Tim Rice, Jorg Schmeisser, Theodora Varnay Jones, Laura Corallo-Titus, Marsha Cottrell, Howard Hersh, Kathy Greenwald, Shelby Graham, Norman Locks. Landscapes that continue to take your breath away. Exquisite food. And of course the wedding of dear pals Sally and Meehan. I’m in a kind of sensory overload so it may take a few days for all the cognitive systems to fire up again.
Sunrise from Marin County
Kevin Simmers and Holly Downing in her studio in Sebastopol
Holly’s current show at Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at Cowell College, UCSC
Oversized platter by Ramah Commanday in St. Helena
Ramah’s “Every Day a Pinched Pot” project from 2011 (these are from February)
Richard Carter’s pottery studio and Japanese kilns in Pope Valley
Tomatillos and grapes from Ramah’s garden
Tim Rice in his North Berkeley studio
The view of Marin County from Tim’s old studio in Hercules
Sunset through the fog in San Francisco
Printmaker extraordinaire Jorg Schmeisser who passed away in June
Theodora Varnay Jones at Don Soker Gallery
Howard Hersh in his studio in the Shipyard in San Francisco
New encaustic work by Howard
The Shipyard
Thriving hydrangeas at Mission Ranch
Norman Locks and Monica Grant in the UCSC printmaking facility
Drawing studio with northern exposure, UCSC (we had nothing like this back in the day!)
Carmel River where it meets the sea
Sheep meadow in Carmel
Meehan and Sally, post ceremony
Carmel River Beach looking towards Point Lobos
Great post, Deborah! I like the analogy of the mapping.
Visiting your studio and seeing your work in person was such a highlight for me. And where you are is other worldly. Thanks so much for spending the time with me on Thursday.
So enjoyed this post! What a wonderful sensual experience.
Love the pots by Ramah Commanday.
Thanks Maureen, you are right. And I’ll pass your compliments along to Ramah.
Rich text and images. Interesting how time as experienced retrospectively yields the layered texture and complexity of an art piece or even the written document which is the residue of successive interconnecting washes of insight. Lillian Hellman uses “pentimento” for one of her three memoirs and Gore Vidal “plimpsest” for his. Welcome back.
Thanks so much A. Got to get caught up on where and what you are these days…Much love.
Beautiful pictures Deborah. I like how the pacing grounds each artist in their place; in their time. I felt like you were orbiting around me out here.
Tracy, I spent some time on your website–your work is lush and really strong. Thanks so much for stopping by here. It does seem like a mutual orbiting…
What wonderful pictures! Looks like you must have had a fabulous time. Thanks for giving us a glimpse!
Nancy, Thanks so much. It was a richly rewarding visit on so many levels. I’ll write later this week about the SFMOMA, going through a major and mega transformation.
Gorgeous, evocative pictures. Thanks, Deborah, for letting us in.
T, thanks so much for stopping by. More to share with you soon!
Nice to have been a guiding participant for the River-Mouth section; so fine to see all the wonderful things that encompass your experiences, Deborah, and all the art walking through it.
John, Thanks for stopping by. And yes, you and Kathy were masterful guides to a magical place. I loved that picture of you looking out to see that I sent to Kathy–Captain Kirk on the (stone) deck… Hope to see you again soon!
It looks like this was a beautiful trip. Thanks for sharing the art and the landscape and the people with us.
Altoon, I thought of you so many times while I was there. I think you would really appreciate Holly’s mezzotints–meticulous and haunting. I told her about you as well. Hope you are well and moving into the next season with gusto.
Wow! Thanks, Deborah, for the extraordinary photos, which give at least a taste of the visual richness of your trip.
Thanks Michael. Our old stomping ground makes for a great destination…Love to you all.