Patrice Dworkin: Narrating Maps
Patrice Dworkin is an American artist, born in Boston, MA. The artist ernead a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University, and an MBA from University of Pennsylvania. She started her career in the advertising field in New York City, but then she decided to become a full time artist. She is currently living and working in Los Angeles.
Faultlines
As the artist herself states many of her works are influenced by the environment that surrounds her, the series Faultlines is no exception. The artist with this series has created new celestial geographies starting from topographical maps of her neighborhood of Los Angeles.
She began her work by studying the literal and metaphorical movements of the ground beneath her feet through topographical maps. Then she associated them with images of her home’s sidewalk. Her work aims to reveal the mutability of what apparently seems immutable. The resulting compositions, even though created from the observation of the ground, appear similar to celestial nebulae
“My art is very strongly influenced by my environment and close observation of my coastal neighborhood in Southern California. My work has been noted for its resemblance to topography, and now I find myself using the human figure as a map.”
Patrice Dworkin
Treasure
This 100-piece series was created by the artist in 100 consecutive days following a challenge. The works are small maps of the treasure representing cartographies born from the imagination of the author. Her aim is the search for a treasure that is abstract, which is the meaning of life and art. The hundred different roads indicated by the hundred different maps created by the artist tell a hundred different stories and this denotes the narrative quality of Patrice Dworkin’s art.
She use a cartographic syntax, but she distort it by contaminating it with bright colors. The sheets used are Bhutan’s paper and have a very large grain, which gives a sense of materiality to the works. In a very interesting video you can see all the100 works in series.
Canyon Thirty
Another series that is performed by the artist in a limited number of days is Canyon Thirty. This series is inspired by what the artist sees close to her, the Rustic canyon. The canyon is the setting of the works in which sky, earth, clouds and roads blend in a colorful artistic composition. In these works cartographic elements appear, but the rigidity of the cartographic language is evaded by the artist who creates free and fluctuating works.
Also in these works the artist’s narrative intent emerges, in fact from each piece flows a river of fantastic and imaginary worlds.
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Featured Image: Canyon Thirty Set Two By Patrice Dworkin
