My next body of of work is called Map Coordinates. It continues my series of pieces pairing birds and maps and how they trigger memories that form the tapestry of who we really are. I would also to do fabric pieces as companions to the map work. The fabric pieces should start coming along next year.
This is the first new piece for that body of work. I used bits and pieces of a 1938 topographic map of the Defuniak Springs quadrangle plus a few elements I added using Photoshop. I used an oil paint filter to make the map have the flow that it does and pushed/pulled the colors.
Defuniak is a special place. It’s where I became who I am; that period of influences as you exit childhood but before full-on adulthood. Many bonds formed continue today. Hopefully I’ve captured the sentiment of that period in the poem for this piece – a stanza even appears at the bottom left of the painting.
Sunshine State yesterday
Alabama Avenue, Rural Route 6,
Willow Bend Way
-Up to the Genesee
Weekend cypress knee catfish,
Spanish Moss reaching
to Cabbage Palm myth
-Flowing down bloodlines
Bayside crab feast
Teenage sunset bonfire
Hawaiian Tropic perfume
-Desires whispered in the pines
These are faded postcard travelogues
Painted map coordinates
From the man I am
to the little boy I was
-Running to be.
The property we had south of DeFuniak was on a bit of hill with a great view of Rock Hill to the south. Dad always referred to it as “the hill.” It was his piece of heaven on earth and where he was most happy; Zen and the art of hobby farming I suppose. There were always a family or two of Mockingbirds and our cat Max learned to give them a wide berth. Of all the critters Max grappled with over the years, Mockingbirds were ones he could never catch. Whenever I see ’em today I’m reminded of that time. If Dad has an avian familiar surely it’s a Mockingbird; steely grey, stately and protective of family.
I’m approaching my 40th high school reunion. Sometimes in chats with friends we talk about time travel and if we’d change anything. Most have something they’d want change or a nudge in a different direction. Not me, I listened to Doc Brown and respect the space/time continuum. I like where I’m at and how I arrived at this junction in time.
My Dad died shortly after I graduated. It’s defining and I wouldn’t be the man I am today without it, but sometimes I wish that kid back there in 1986 would’ve had some warning to the snakes and arrows he’s heir to. The second map painting I did was of a Mockingbird on a Walton County road map. I plastered a phrase to one side because it appeared slighly off balance. Perhaps the phrase (borrowed from a R.E.M. lyric and changed to fit my use for the painting) is meant to be something like that; a veiled admonition and a statement of purpose to my 1986 self. Down the way the road’s divided, Paint me the places you will see.
