My studio space

I decided to take a couple photos of my studio space at this moment because over the next couple days, I will be replacing this work with my hopefully newer stuff.

Contextual notebook

Through the course of this project we all had to keep a record of different artists that inspired us. These are a few pages from my notebook which I thought are quite interesting.

David Lillburn 
Les Madias Ras - this is seven drypoint prints which together form a map of Dublin.

Cathy Prendergast 
In 1992, Kathy began working on this series of city drawings. Each map consists of delicate lines that depict the main thoroughfares and streets of a city as though they were the veins and arteries of a human body.

Leah Evans
Leah's quilted wall hangings are based on imagined places. She shows evidence of humankind's effects on the landscape while letting the viewer come to their own conclusion while keeping her commentary on enviromental impact subtle.

Vasco Mourao
Mourao's architectural drawings are a  fascinating journey through cityscapes of an original imagination and a busy hand.

Susan Giannantonio
This series "Bike Jam" consists of bright and cheerful watercolour paints applied to a canvas.

Yuko Nishimura
Yuko's inspiration comes from the simplicity with which paper art can be created from just one sheet, and without ever being touched with a tool.

Felting Heaven

After doing a textiles workshop, I decided to try lots of felting and knitting techniques.

This was me experimenting with felting and sewing. I made this swatch of felt using wool, hot water and washing up liquid. I then had the idea of sewing maps onto the felt to see how they turned out.

This is a map of Limerick sew onto some felt taht I made.

And this is a map of Paris sewn on. I think the map of paris really resembles the wheel of a bike. The circular shape surrounding the outter area and all the differnt roads resembling the spokes of a wheel is one idea that I would like to play with.

These, then, are some experimental balls of felt that i made.

This final felt ball really looks like a globe!

As part of my giant mixed media collage, I decided to make a large piece of felt and sew on a picture. This will eventually turn out to be part of a bike and basket so watch this space!

Wood Cut Galore

So since I began college, I have been dying to get into the printing room and I have eventually managed to make a woodcut of a map and print it as many times as I can on different mediums and using so many different colours.

This is the wood cut when i had finished cutting out everything that was going to be left white. It was so difficult to cut out some of the tiny sections and took me about 7 or 8 hours in total to do.

The following are just a selection of some of the prints on paper that i did. Each time a printed the block, i left it to dry and then rotated and printed the block on top using the same/different colour each time. I think they look really interesting and really capture the chaos of maps. The few that have a colour in the backround were done by monoprinting onto the paper first and then printing the map onto it.

Inspiration

While on the internet I came across some amazing artists that use maps in a new and creative way.

I like how Ian Hundley takes ordinary maps and uses them to create informative quilts.

This piece is called Bierbergen Oedelum Black and is made using cotton, wool, silk and linen. More of his work can be seen at http://www.ianhundleystudio.com/quilts.php

Matthew Cusick uses maps as a surrogate for paint - their inherent visual qualities of tone, value, and density employed to render the spatial image of the highways. His works are mainlt based on the theme of travel roads and movement. These 2 pieces along with many others can be found at http://www.lisadent.com/ArtistWorks/Matthew/MatthewShowcase.html

Scott St John with maps to reconstruct other images such as quilts, 3d works, circles/dots and other figures.

This piece is 24" x 72" in size and was begun in 2004. The artist is still working on it to date.

http://www.tofuart.com/

And finally, Leah Evans's quilted wall hangings consist of layers of the following techniques: appliqué, reverse appliqué, piecing, natural and synthetic dyeing, needle-felting, hand printing, and a variety of embroidery stitches. She uses both machiene and hand sewing techniques to create these beautiful pieces.

More of her work can be seen on the artists website.http://leahevanstextiles.com/

Updated collage

More of the collage that I have begun....it's taking longer than expected! But hopefully, if all goes according to plan, it will look good in the end.

Current work

During one of my first weeks of this project I made this photo collage on the wall of my studio.

It is a collection of images I gathered in a bike shop on O Connell  Street. This week and for a few following, I plan to recreate this collage using a different medium for each image.

I began with the image to the far left of the photo and translated it into a line drawing.

I like how the complexity of the lines make this an appealing image.

Following that, I took the image above this and decided to turn it into a collage itself. It's taking time but I think it will look well once finished.

Ideas

I found this website the other day and it gave me some great ideas for working with maps http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/10511/magnificent-maps.html In the next week or so I plan on exploring different types of maps as well as working on the other side of my project; bikes.

Limerick in snapshots

These are a few of the photos I took in my first week to get inspiration for the

project. They are all of things that caught my eye while walking through

Limerick city.