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SJL’s Map of Prague

In 2011, while teaching animation at Wellesley College, I sublet a small apartment in Brighton, MA. This apartment had neither tables nor desks. I turned the owner’s kitchen cutting board into a drawing space.

I inked a sketch of a map and carried it with me through several more temporary living spaces until I finally had a wall big enough to expand the image.

 

Eventually the rather minimalist image became more maximalist. I couldn’t figure out the orientation. Which way was up? Seemed like a metaphor for my life.

At that point, I had started helping out my former art professor Walter Feldman in his studio. I showed him the painting and he asked, What’s with all that white space? why is that deckled edge so precious to you? I think he meant, Paint that edge!My neighbor, artist Jane Andreozzi, suggested I cut it. A brilliant idea…but maybe not so great for puzzle production, this organic edge – until I myself learn how to use a jigsaw blade. So, you have a puzzle with a white border and the painting reverts back to an image with a white border! The tyranny of the rectangle continues…

© Sarah Jane Lapp, 2024