Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Laramie: A Gem City Atlas - in progress

My partner, Ben Pease, and I had the privilege of being the cartographers on Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, a brilliant collection of essays and maps that explore the layers of meaning that cohabit a location. Rebecca was invited to  the University of Wyoming as an Eminent Writer in Residence. She inspired Alyson Hagy’s graduate creative writing students to create Laramie: A Gem City Atlas. Ben and I were invited along to help the students create maps to go with their essays.

The writers choose topics and researched locations that we placed onto a base map of Laramie. They then looked for artists to embellish their maps. To give the students some notion of possibilities, I created some responses to their data. The writers are working with artists now to create responses of their own. We’re working with them long distance to help them marry art with maps, and I'm looking forward to the exhibition of Laramie: A Gem City Atlas, opening May 2 at the University of Wyoming Art Museum.

Tasha LeClair’s idea was to combine locations of ghost sightings with Laramie's ubiquitious cottonwood trees.

And Luling Osofsky searches for signs of Asia in the Wild West.







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