Reception Thursday, November 10th
4:30-6:00pm, Talk at 5:30
This show features the work of six artists, designers, and professors that draw on the language of mapmaking to explore various aspects of physical and social geography.
Roberley Bell, Artist & former Professor, RIT
Roberley Bell's Malmö maps are the results of a research fellowship at the University of Malmö in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, summer 2022. It began with the premise of walking the city each day to explore the edges, to become more and more familiar with Malmö as a place over time. Drawn on translucent vellum the daily maps laid atop of one another form a network weaving together the spaces and places of Malmö. The accompanying blue thread is the length of the streets walked; however many streets were walked multiple times.
website: www.roberleybell.com
Naomi Darling, Five College Associate Professor of Sustainable Architecture; Naomi Darling Architecture
Naomi Darling’s work draws on historical maps and geological surveys of the Connecticut River Valley and Long Island Sound, as well as markers of her own peripatetic movement in and through each region. Successive geographic and geological strata kindle a sense of deep earth time: torn paper fissures and chine-collé elements also evoke the schisms and molten transformations of the earth’s crust. Personal temporal layers–the path of a favorite walk through the marsh, or the early traces of a love story–are overlaid on these graphical representations of geological upheaval, combining to create a delicate mapping of memory and place.
website: www.naomidarling.com
Jordan Kanter, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, UMass Amherst
The Solar River project explores the potential to develop canal spanning PV installations over existing water infrastructure in the desert landscape of the Colorado River Basin. The maps presented in this gallery represent a line of inquiry into the geographies, water and power flows, and agricultural and urban land-use across this infrastructural network and the territory it transcribes. The ambition in this research is to better understand these territories and identify opportunities to create new synergies across the water-power nexus to which this region depends.
website: https://tectonicus.com/solarriver
Sandy Litchfield, Artist & Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, UMass Amherst
Sandy Litchfield’s work is focused on landscape as a construct for understanding place and notions of belonging. Working primarily as a painter, she is interested in representing one’s positional relationship to place- like being over, under, around, or inside. Visual concepts are informed by a diverse collection of imagery, including old maps, historic pictures, and photographs. Dynamic compositions may suggest themes of metamorphosis and growth, as well as complexity, eccentricity and the fantastic.
website: sandylitchfield.com
Amanda Maciuba, Artist & Assistant Professor of Printmaking, Mount Holyoke College
Amanda Maciuba’s work explores how purposeful human actions, alongside uncontrollable factors of time and nature, alter both the current landscape and human agency within that landscape. The remnants of our past modifications, in combination with what has evolved over those remnants, leave physical traces of past lives. The work displayed here is specifically concerned with the landscapes, communities, and development practices of the Connecticut River Valley in Western Massachusetts and the Missouri River Watershed throughout the Midwest.
website: amandamaciuba.com
Samantha Solano, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, UMass Amherst; Landscape Architect
Maps have the power to influence future realities. In these series of maps, emphasis is placed on describing what is to generate action to what could be. Arid territories are misunderstood, yet they account for a large part of our global landscape – we need to take them seriously. Recognized design exists in primarily affluent white neighborhoods, reinforcing homogenous design values and practices that exclusionary and predatory. Salano maps to reveal these hidden narratives threaded throughout our landscapes. Solano maps to change that landscape.
website: http://www.velaproject.org/
DESIGN BUILDING GALLERY
University of Massachusetts
John W Olver Design Building #180
551 North Pleasant Street
Amherst MA
Hours: Monday – Friday 9AM to 4PM
Closed on school holidays