city map (2010)

city map (2010)
Originally uploaded by kelise72

60 x 90 cm
cotton duck (canvas), cotton cord, hemp, and silk

This piece is one that I submitted for a critique in the final weeks of the term.

I suppose it might make more sense with some of the other pieces I've also done recently and if I'd taken a better photo (which when I do, it will replace this one).

What I was going for here was the idea of representing a connection or relationship between city and rural (or nature) only not so directly.

With that in mind, I've sketched a city, often composed itself of concrete and steel but in this case, I've alluded to bridges and roads with "natural" materials - hemp knots, and cotton cord, respectively, all stitched onto a cotton canvas fabric. The river then is expressed in silk, a sort of "flowing" fabric that fits the idea of a river - another kind of opposite - where a river is a naturally-occuring thing, silk fabric is a manufactured thing.

In the whole piece there are layers of conflict and tension - the clean, calm, soft "natural" feel of the materials against the idea of a dirty, busy, polluted city... the well-known profile of the river against the anonymous roads... the bridges so distinctive in real-life repeated in the their right locations on the river but with a meaningless sameness (so you could know what each bridge is named though it looks the same as all the others)... the city made to look much like a slice of something quite organic as perhaps skin stiched together and forming a scar...

It may take a moment or two to recognise this map, but once you see what is familiar, you will ALWAYS see it.

It is this idea, this little bit of subterfuge, that I plan to incorporate in the next piece or two... I might be on to something!