MayBe Art is MAPPING
Maps are a universal medium for guidance in communication of geography for exploration. They orient us as the nucleus to our position relative to everything else. But what are the origins of a maps directions which initiates the composition of its navigation?
The earliest known physical maps are of the heavens dating to 16,500 BCE found on the walls of the Lascaux caves mapping out part of the night sky. Maps serve as records of the advancement of knowledge of the human race, which could be passed from members of one generation to those that follow in the development of culture. Western science reads and encode who we are from our genetic maps according to their arrangements. Our genetic instructions are active information such as our patterns of behavior and unique momentum. Perhaps our creations are yet another generation of our personal maps.
“The Native map exists in a complex enfolded or implicate order for it contains not only topographical information but the passage of time. It involves the whole relationship between the land and the people. Music speaks of the cosmic and the eternal. So too do the great laws of physics. But again as we compare the Native with the scientific maps we discover an apparent paradox. For, while the scientific map, which strives for the eternal is ever changing, that of the Native, which deals directly with time, has an timeless nature. The Native map is learned in childhood. It is absorbed while sitting at the feet of elders and hearing their stories and songs. The map grows out of dance and ritual, out of the movements of the seasons and the ceremonies of the group. This map in the head is not simply a plan involving contours, vegetation and trails, for it expresses the group’s place and their sense of harmony within the landscape; it goes beyond the practical into the sacred, yet makes no sharp distinction between either, for every act of the Native person has a sacramental quality. The map reason, sensation and feeling, is the meaning of the group, it is what holds them together, what binds them to their land, it is an expression of the music of their language.” From F. David Peat’s essay I’ve Got a Map in My Head
Ellen Jantzen
Pattern Print
Digital Photograph
ellenjantzen.com
John Adam Fahey
Streets of The Mind
Acrylic on Canvas
54 x 52 inches
artforfilmnyc.com