Just as I was beginning to feel discouraged—the murder of my snake, the unfinished business at Apache Mesa Ranch—came a revelation as I was getting a cup of coffee at my neighborhood hangout here in Santa Fe: Downtown Subscription. The shop, which often showcases local artists, has hung fifteen or so Thread Dresses on three walls. I’ve never seen anything like them, and to my mind, they stand for two endangered species: maps, and little girls’ dresses. I miss the maps a lot more than the dresses.
Everybody knows what has happened to maps. I’ve never heard anyone lament their disappearance; the shop here that sells guidebooks (also disappearing), travel things and maps has just about given up on the maps. Now people use their cellphones and that mysterious voice—adjusted for accent and gender—that calmly and explicitly gives the wrong directions to the addled driver. Well, not always the wrong directions but whether right or wrong, stated with the same confidence: and so no one buys maps or keeps one in the glove compartment.
Then an artist named Liza took things in hand when she decided to turn maps into an art form. In this case, they’re all New Mexico maps which you can’t really see on the dress above. She cuts a map in the shape of a three-year-old’s dress and embellishes it with appliquéd flowers and bows. Some of the dresses are more elaborate than others; this one has a lace edging to the skirt. All recall something that probably never existed: the innocence of pretty little girls.
And they recall lost maps.
The innocence probably never existed; it was a fantastical creation of adult imagination. The maps existed and caused tourists to stand on street corners in foreign towns, frowning at a crush of folded paper. Usually, the man was doing the frowning—the woman was standing trustingly alongside, waiting to be directed.
Liza told me that she majored in geography at college because of her love of maps. She lacked the confidence then, she told me, to enroll in art school. Then life took over as it so often does with women and whirled her off in another direction. But now, having raised a family, she went back to her earlier love and began to explore the constructions she could make with maps; some of them are 2 1/2 feet tall with an armature, designed to stand in a room and dominate it. These small dresses, hanging on wooden hangers, don’t dominate but they distract with the sweetness that must, for authenticity, have a drop of bitterness.
We are so good at using the artifacts of a discredited past to create something modern and even revolutionary. Here in my studio, I have a hanging column made entirely of old handkerchiefs, the embroidered kind you used to see at yard sales. Once found in a dainty lady’s purse, they need to be ironed which condemned them—eventually, after the advent of Kleenex—to yard sales.
As they flutter seductively, the message embroidered on each handkerchief is hidden. It’s the message that caused a man I knew to ask that the column be hung somewhere else.
The handkerchiefs are now at home in my studio where Santa Fe Summer, above, will soon join them.
Upon a recent drive to upstate NY from the Bluegrass, not realizing that the NY through way was limited access, there were no visible hotel motels, closed restrooms at plazas and gps was of little help.
First item of business upon return was a road atlas.