Sketchbook experiments with the art of maps/cartography. The page on the right experiments with our emotional ties to our homes; illustrating concepts of travel, movement, migration, and fitting together the jigsaw pieces of our lives. We have the ability to travel far and wide now, with the potential to live or visit any place. Having too much choice can be detrimental, making it harder for us to figure out who, where and what we want to be in our lifetimes. The optical illusion-like heart is made up of earthquake maps, commenting on how our emotional ties to our homes are fragile, and can be broken or damaged in the split second of a natural disaster. The sketchbook pages on the right are more political, commenting on the current Brexit atmosphere, and how political figures are playing with countries and homes like they are pawns in a chess game, easy to “throw away”.
Developing the art of maps further, I began experimenting with representations of more abstract concepts- like time. Time is so wide a subject, full of symbolic connotations. I wanted to use a medium that would allow me to create a spontaneous but fragile representation of the “thread of time”- free machining a red thread in chaotic patterns along a strip of fabric. You can follow this single thread in loops around the material, sometimes in straight uninhibited lines, other times in jagged zig zags. Beginning with the Big Band, I started documenting symbolic representations of time- through the planets of the solar system, constellations, the seasons, tracking societal developments of man from caves and rainforests to the industrial revolution- and finally ending with a countdown into the next period of time. This map can be folded like a book- acting as “the Book of Time”.
Caitlin Noble 