Jill Bliss

Working on the Maps series for Fill in the Blank Gallery, I noticed that I left out an encounter with the natural world. Sure, there were images of birds and deer--animals that influence my poetics a lot--but there wasn't a real sense of place established.

Continuing the series, I'm thinking that Jill Bliss's work--introduced to me by Mint Design Blog--will largely influence my thinking about maps. I love how her work shows nature as the composition of itself, as its own beginning and end. Her newest book, Drawing Nature, has tips about how to integrate the natural environment into the one we are artistically creating.

I can't wait to get my hands on her book and to begin really fulfilling an appreciation of space / place and region through more aware attention to how nature is coming into my poetics. There's a giveaway of the book at Mint--fingers crossed for giving away being gotten by these hands.

Bliss's work for culinary kinship

At the bakery, in my poetics, and in my cartography practice, I'm really becoming more and more present in Ithaca, in Central New York. I'm starting to feel less Midwestern, less Chicagoan. Getting my hands on some wild ramps this week will certainly help this goal!