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 the show and is also titled ‘Map Coordinates.’ 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.
