Lakes of Note


Have at long last been able to hang up my dear friend Claire Cooper's amazing work 'Notable Lakes part iv', a graphically compiled collation of lakes, both real and fictitious. The shapes of the Real Lakes are plotted on one side, and the Fictitious ones on the reverse (or vice versa).

I love the way the semi-transparent paper allows both sides to be visible - the overlapping of the dots creates an interesting variation in tone. After in initial quandary, I decided to hang it with those plastic poster holders, they rather exacerbate the feeling of looking at some kind of high school geography class OHP projection of how the world looked at some point in history.
It does make for an easy and painless transition from Notable 'real' Lakes to Notable 'fictitious' ones however.

Because it does look like a map. Occasionally I will look at it thinking how much lake xxv 'Taal Lake' could almost pass for Brazil. I asked Claire to send me one which she had folded, how she originally envisioned the work. The sharp creases keeps the work from being completely flat, and the poster holders do their job of helping it keep it's shape. The folds give a worn physicality to the work that the flatness and sheen of the paper would have overpowered. I think they give the work more character.

This is the second piece of art I have bought, along with my friend Ash's brilliant piece The Travelling Mime. I look forward to expanding my collection, especially with my works by my exceptionally talented friends.
I would also recommend Claire's various Internet endeavours, Olio Ataxia, as one half of Diamonds & Wood, and not to mention her War and Peace tumblr: dedicated to film stills from the 1968 mammoth adaption of Tolstoy's War and Peace and a personal fave.

Wayward Land



































Chart of Segment of the Western Arctic North and Northwest of Grant Land by Edwin Swift Balch, 1912, showing the unexplored 'Crocker Land', sighted by Robert Peary in 1906. This fabled land lead to an ill-fated expedition to explore the nature and possible inhabitants of Crocker Land, however they discovered the land in fact, did not exist, and was actually a type of mirage known as a Fata Morgana.

The day was exceptionally clear, not a cloud or trace of mist; if land could be seen, now was our time . Yes, there it was! It could even be seen without a glass, extending from southwest true to northeast. Our powerful glasses, however.. brought out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the white) the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow-capped peaks to such a degree that, had we not been out on the frozen sea for 150 miles, we would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our judgment then as now, is that this was a mirage or loom of the sea ice.

 This imaginary land mass, created by a trick of the light, and the subsequent effort of the Crocker Land Expedition, is the basis for a new work I have begun in my new studio space. A hand embroidered rendering of this map on a white shower curtain, stitched in white thread and fishing line, blurring outlines with surroundings, incorporating materials which will shimmer in the light, reflecting upon ideas of mirages and mistaken realities, and the feeling of being small and inconsequential in a vast, cold landscape.

This is the first work of a series I am working on involving ideas about loneliness, solitude, islands, ships and the sea.

"...the Crocker Land mirage could symbolise the loneliness of the sea in another way. It is almost like a delusion instead of an illusion, something Donald Crowhurst may have imagined seeing, to convince himself of his sanity (or lack thereof). The sense of false hope a mirage can cause, just like how a weary traveller in the desert believes the mirage he is seeing is an oasis, it is uncanny how it appears to take the form of the thing one most desires, and the opposite of what is actually there - in the desert one believes he is seeing water, whereas at sea, one thinks he has sighted land."
- notes from my art journal about Crocker Land and mirages.

The Castle of Urania



Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's first astronomical observatory on Ven, built 1576-80 and dedicated to Urania 'The Muse of Astronomy'.

The main building of Uraniborg was square, about 15 meters on a side, and built mostly of red brick. Two semi-circular towers, one each on the north and south sides of the main building, giving the building a somewhat rectangular shape overall. The main floor consisted of four rooms, one of which was occupied by Tycho and his family, the other three for visiting astronomers. The northern tower housed the kitchens, and the southern a library. The second floor was divided into three rooms, two of equal size and one larger. The larger room was reserved for visiting royalty. On this level the towers housed the primary astronomical instruments, accessed from outside the building or from doors on this floor. Outrider towers, supported on pillars, housed additional instruments slightly further from the building, giving them a wider angle of view. On the third floor was a "loft", subdivided into eight smaller rooms for students. Only the roofs of the towers reached this level, although a single additional tower extended above the loft in the middle of the building, similar to a widow's walk, accessed via a spiral staircase from the 3rd floor. Uraniborg also featured a large basement; it housed an alchemical laboratory in one end, and storage for food, salt and fuel at the other.

A large wall, 75 meters on a side and 5.5 meters high was planned to surround Uraniborg, but never built, instead a high earth mound was constructed and lasted until today being the only remain of the observatory still in place. Uraniborg was located in the very middle, with an extensive set of intricate gardens between the mound walls and the building. In addition to being decorative, the gardens also supplied herbs for the Tycho's medicinal chemistry experiments. The gardens are currently being re-created, using seeds found on-site or identified in Tycho's writings.

Codex Seraphinianus


"Location of the city of Mazeolium unknown, except for existing somewhere within the vast Cherry Tomato Archipelago. Note the fully operational Rovers, after a successful transition from sister city, The Village."

A maze from the Codex Seraphinianus, Luigi Serafini's encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in an undecipherable language.

"...the book lies in the uneasy boundary between surrealism and fantasy, given an odd literary status by its masquerade as a book of fact."

"Some people with whom I have shared this book find it frightening or disturbing in some way. It seems to them to glorify entropy, chaos, and incomprehensibility. There is very little to fasten onto; everything shifts, shimmers, slips."

Available at Elam's Fine Arts Library, and I may just have to request the copy held at Konstfack in Stockholm.

The Intrepid Shamus


The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles. Locales frequented by Philip Marlowe, the way LA used to be, as described by Raymond Chandler. Painstakingly researched, it resides somewhere between fiction and reality, with Chandler's Los Angeles overlapping the city in it's present state, revealing buildings and locations Chandler attempted to disguise and camouflage, nestled amongst iconic sites like Union Station and The Chinese Theatre.
I am in awe of the cartographical detective who created this.
Hollywood, Bay City, Los Angeles.