Small Town Oregon... mapping

by Jo Reimer



Small Town Oregon
Collage Painting
14" x 18"

Like many of you I often being my day with quiet meditation and writing in my journal, morphing from what has been into plans for the coming day in the studio. I explore ideas about current work during this time and jot down sketchy ideas about what I'll do with my studio time. 

I'm continuing to explore ways to use my connection with maps in my artwork and am finding even more excitement in working through this series.  This journey via my old maps just gets more interesting.

I've shredded maps; I've cut maps with scissors; I've torn maps; I've drawn the lines of highways, roads, and streets on paper and canvas; I've used maps as the substrate upon which I paint; I've glued maps onto just about anything that will hold still...  

....and the ideas keep coming.

Small Town Oregon began as an atmospheric landscape painting in acrylic.  It needed something more interesting than soft color so I asked the What If questions and decided to lift the maps of small towns upright as though the maps were being projected onto the sky.

Before I go much further I'll write a statement about the series so that it become clearer in my mind, not that this will be the final statement. It'll be refined as I work, but simply stating some of my intentions should help me leap ahead. It's one of the things I remember from Journalism 101... answer the questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How... and and my own mantra, What If...  what could I do next because of what's been done.