Mapping My Los Angeles by Reconstructing the Thomas Guide

Three years ago, I moved from LA after almost a decade there. Life in LA entailed long, traffic-heavy, and intense drives, but also many opportunities to walk for pleasure or errands. I was fortunate to live in Silverlake, a neighborhood where I could walk to most of the shops: Trader Joe's and Mayfair, a health food store, a post pack and ship, hardware and art supply, Video Journeys, movie theaters, boutiques, restaurants, bars and even a yoga studio. Most weekends I could usually park my car and not drive at all, unless to visit far-flung friends. Most friends were far-flung because we were all driving long distances to get to our school or work or other places where we might have originally met. On average, most people I know in LA drive 40 or 50 miles a day, which was true for me as well. However, it's not uncommon for people to drive much longer distances throughout greater LA County.

In the days before GPS technology was as mainstream as now, everyone I knew found her or his way around the city with the
Thomas Guide, a several hundred page, spiral-bound, street-by-street map of LA. The Thomas Guide opens with a page-size image of LA County with grids and numbers corresponding to the hundreds of close-up maps that follow. I so often used my first 1997 Thomas Guide that the worn and highlighted pages started falling out. I eventually replaced it with a 2002 edition that stayed pretty much intact because, in those 5 years, I'd committed to memory so much of the city that I rarely needed to check for specific streets. When I left LA, I had one very worn and one relatively new book map of Los Angeles.

While living in LA, I began to have the notion of deconstructing and then reconstructing that map of the sprawl. Shortly after leaving, I took apart both Guides and began to stitch them together as a single flat map. My relationship to driving with the Thomas Guide had been page by page, single snapshots of LA streets. I felt curious to see the pages of the book become a single image.

When I stitched together an entire map of LA out of Thomas Guide pages, the end result measured over 8 x 12 feet. Onto that massive map, I began to hand-stitch over roads where I'd walked or driven, using the stitching to represent my footprint and tire-print on the environment. The stitches would record my complicit impact on the landscape. I'd already been stitching walks from memory and knew that I wanted to do something similar with driving, but wasn’t sure exactly what or how. Would I use the sewing machine – trading one machine for another? Hand-embroidery? I wasn't sure.

I paused on the project due to my uncertainty about how to continue, the complications of another move and a new studio with limited wall space. So, I packed the map up in a project box with the intention of picking it up again later when I had sufficient wall space.

Fortunately, that time has arrived! I'll be moving into a new public studio next week (more details later) which will afford me the space and viewing distance to hang the work and complete it. Here's what I have so far:


Walking and Driving in LA (Work in Progress)
paper map, machine stitching, hand stitching, cotton muslin backing
8' x 12'


Walking and Driving in LA (Work in Progress)
detail

This (still unfinished) detail is only 2" by 4" and represents just a few miles. I'm hand-stitching each of the walks (as I remember them) in shades of green embroidery floss. The darker the shade, the more frequently I walked that particular route. Similarly, I'm hand-stitching the drives in red with the darker shades representing the streets and free-ways I traveled most frequently. I'll continue with this process over the entire map.

Unsurprisingly, I'm finding this piece quite a memory exercise. In remembering how much of LA I covered, I'm overwhelmed by the realization that I was only one person in over 10 million – the environmental footprint each person makes in that (or any) city is tremendous. The enormity of the impact is staggering... and I've only just begun the project.

Fallow continued

110 pages posted with only 100 more to go in the thesis archive.


I used to think fallow spaces were fertile spaces
when I was angry as a girl
I would run away to the fields and pull up by the roots
whatever things were growing wild
I would bring them back to my room to sit in a bucket of water and rot

fresh flowers

archiving the thesis

I've gotten back to archiving my MFA thesis, Fallow, but have yet to finish. 71 posts down. 139 posts to go. This is a slow process indeed.

Already September

It's September and I'm working though my studio is far from being set up. I'm just working around the mess. Will be back with some pics in a week or two.

The weather is still extremely cool here in Mass and some individual trees have already begun to change color. Fall is going to be brilliant!

Setting up the new studio in New England

We made it to Massachusetts last Friday without any major moving difficulties. We arrived to find the place beautiful! ...and the weather cool. We're both excited and happy to be here. Even the cats love it here; they have plenty of windows and a sunporch (which I've already set up with an easel, a work-in-progress and some painting supplies).

I'm still working on arranging the shelving and stash in the fiber studio. Will post more as things progress.

Moving Update

Frank and I found a great place to live in Massachusetts! I'll have a home studio for at least the first year or two, but I won't have it set up until August. In the mean time, I'll continue to pack... and then the move...

See you again in August.

Studio clearout and traveling to New England to find a new place

I cleared out my Knoxville studio this week and have been packing things up for my and Frank's move to the Boston area where he'll be starting his new job as a tenure-track professor. This has been a long road for us (8 years in Los Angeles for our respective graduate programs and then a three year appointment in Knoxville), but worth it to be finally headed where we want to be.

Of course, we'll both miss all of our friends, family, fellow artists and colleagues, but we're absolutely thrilled to be settling into a new life in an exciting new location.

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Newark, Delaware making my way up to New England where I'll look for housing. I'm on the road as a pit crew member of an ultra-cycling record attempt. My mother-in-law's husband, Gerry Eddlemon holds the national first place record in state crossings and the world's second place record. On this trip, he'll be attempting two more state crossings in New Jersey and Vermont. In exchange for my help as a crew member, we'll be stopping in Massachusetts between rides so I can look at housing.

Here are Mikki and Gerry together in the Connecticut crossing. And though the article doesn't mention it, Mikki is an extreme athlete as well having won several marathons and long distance runs in her age category and placed first in several races in the Senior Olympic Games... hence the big banner in the first picture welcoming "ULTRA EDDLEMONS."

Frank will be flying into Boston in a few days to meet us there. Exciting stuff!

Sale! studio materials and equipment

I haven't posted in a while because I've been both out of town and working on clearing out home and studio for our upcoming move. I do have some new work as well, but don't have the photos back from the photo shoot yet. Hope to post those soon.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been selling some of the sorted items and studio furniture and plan to sort out more items for First Friday, which is next week. So far, I have for sale:

Consew industrial sewing machine with table
vintage and other fabrics
miter box, saw and other framing tools
35 mm cameras, Pentax and Cannon
Bell and Howell 16mm film camera
slide projector
opaque projector
art tackle boxes
storage boxes and containers
small frames
vintage tables

... and lots more that I can't remember right now. Will update if I think of anything significant.

August First Friday: Shoebox Sculpture, Aaron McIntosh and the new studio orientation

We had another excellent First Friday last week with the chance to talk to several people we hadn’t seen in a while and the opportunity to meet more cool new folks. I only looked into a couple of other galleries by recommendation from some of my visitors who referred me next door to the Shoebox Sculpture exhibit at UT’s Downtown Gallery and across the way to see the excellent work of Aaron McIntosh at 1010.

I didn’t have much time or room (the gallery was pretty crowded) to spend with the Shoebox Sculptures at the Downtown Gallery, so I’ll have to go back over the next few days. One of the sculptures really leapt out at me though: Brooklyn artist John Drury’s Shoe Nut… a lovely little piece constructed from the tips of two wingtip shoes.

Continuing with the men’s wear theme...

Across the way at 1010, fiber artist Aaron McIntosh was exhibiting some stitched target / breast-like imagery similar to this work where he’s mentioned in this issue of Fiberarts Magazine as a young talent to watch. Click on his name to see the work. He is definitely a rare and exceptional talent.

I was most taken with an image on one of Aaron’s cards from a previous show. The quilted piece is titled Family Tree 1 and is constructed from men’s pants fabrics, romance novel pages, cotton batting and thread stitching. I couldn’t find a link to the completed piece, but here’s a picture of the artist working on it. You can get a good sense of how the whole thing looks with these paired and singular egg-like textual parts peeking through (with what looks like reverse appliqué) from the somber grey, taupe, black, etc. of men’s woolens.

For more of Aaron McIntosh’s work scroll down to his name and click on images.

Back across the street at my open studio... here’s a pic of the new set-up since I’ve rotated into my new space:
Barely got this pulled together before First Friday. I’m still not completely moved in. The flowers to the right were a gift from fiber artist Judi Gaston in celebration of the new space. Judi wasn’t able to be at First Friday because she was opening another exhibit at Aerial Gallery in Asheville.

Instances of Resistance are springing up everywhere

I took these photos outside my studio yesterday. They’re part of my ongoing documentation of instances of feral greenery that grow of their own accord in the cracks, crevices and ruins of human construction.

Downtown Fire

I was startled out of bed with an early morning phone call from a family member, "I don't mean to alarm you, but some historic buildings are on fire in downtown Knoxville and it looks like the building your studio is in could be one of them... and if not your building, then one very close by."

I had this instant moment of panic and then a horrible sinking feeling. My first formed thought was of Freida, my dressform... funny the things you want to save from a burning building.

I told Frank what was up, and we turned on the TV news and watched another of Knoxville's beautiful historic buildings being gutted by fire. So many buildings on the historic register are burned out or crumbling vacant.

The best we could make out from the TV was that the buildings on fire were on Jackson Ave, catty corner to my studio, which is on the corner of Jackson and Gay.

I had to leave by 9:30 for a museum tour, but went down to the studio after that – around 11:30. I had the crazy idea that I was going to work this afternoon, but big signs in huge letters had been posted on all the doors: Artists please go home! We are concerned that asbestos toxins are in the air.

I didn’t go in the building, but stayed in the area for about 30 minutes to take the pictures below. The fire was already under control (just smoldering) and the streets had been reopened. I was able to confirm that the damage was limited to the group of abandoned buildings I'd seen on TV. Scary thing was that cinders had flown off the fire and landed on the rooftop of the building directly across the street from us, but fortunately they were able to put that fire out before it ever got started.

I also saw cinders lining our building on the Jackson Ave side.
here's a view of the damage looking out from in front of our building... the building in the left edge of the picture is the one that had fiery cinders land on its roof

here's some debris on Gay St just across the street from our building

looking down on what's left from the Gay St bridge

our building, safe and secure

the buildings across the street, safe as well

studio remodels

Among the things I created last week was this false wall of pegboard for my studio. I got the idea from A1 Lab Arts. Since I can't hang anything directly on the brick and stucco walls, I thought this would be a great solution for securing the corkboards that hold my works-in-progress.

Here's my new wall, as of Wednesday of last week:


Of course, by now I have it covered in bits of work.

New Studio and October First Friday

On Monday October 2, I moved my studio to the beautiful Emporium Building downtown that houses the Arts and Culture Alliance and their galleries. It's an exquisite space in a refurbished old building with lots of brick and hardwood. I'm so happy to be in such a location with so many other artists and part of such a great community.

On the first Friday of every month, the Emporium Building is the central host to the city's First Friday art events, the big opening night for all the galleries that spills out into the streets. Hundreds of people come to these events, and on October 6th there were over 1000 guests – pretty amazing for a small university town like Knoxville, TN.

During the opening, I met lots of great people. Of particular note is one of my fellow artists with a studio in the same building, David Habercom. The work he had up for the event was from the series Under The Bridge – really important work in a place like Knoxville at this time. His work and our conversation about the ideas behind it resonated with my own work and thoughts I have about nostalgia and the difficulty of presence in any one place.

So, I moved in on Monday and by Friday was experiencing my first open studio in the new location. I showed a couple of works in progress from the series, Tourism and Tragedy or How I learned to love where I am, and a related video I made while I was still living in Los Angeles, titled L.A. Trees #1: Palm and Sunset (paradise/apocalypse) and an artist's statement about the series. For an open studio exhibit in a space I'd only had possession of for a few days... it was enough.

Here are a couple of poorly lit pictures of my space that I took today:

Studio assistant and Bird’s Nest Dress

I'm making what I call a Bird's Nest Dress, which requires that I search out every string, cord, ribbon and yarn that I have to see if it's worthy to be woven into this piece... Thus I have created the perfect cat opportunity.

Actually the full title of the dress is Bird's Nest with Fig Leaf. Ahem. It's still all about the hair.

Home Studio

I keep my threads in a vintage card catalog indexed with paint chips. Above it, I have an inexpensive piece of metal from the hardware store used as a magnet board to hold images related to current projects.


I put the documentation of shows and projects in these black / gray project boxes, slides for teaching in the smaller boxes... more tools and supplies in the tall vintage filing cabinet. I use the smaller filing cabinet for paper filing. I found this great little filing cabinet (it opens from the top and is on casters!) for $6 at the St. Vincent De Paul thrift store in Los Angeles.


more shelving with wire baskets on lower levels holding projects and Frieda, my dressform, in front of some corkboards... and that'd be Frank in the background making salsa or something in the kitchen


more of the corkboards (which I painted white to reflect light and see work more easily) and my trusted old Singer and my and Lily the cat's favorite piece of furniture – the pressing table. I love my pressing table.


the pressing table again, the Consew industrial machine, and some tools