Island

Not Vital Island, 2003 tape on paper 17 x 14 inches 43.2 x 35.6 cm sheet

CRETE

Can't help it, getting back to my new LOVE. This map of Crete was made by Bartolommeo dalli Sonetti, at 1485.

island book

Maps by Millo Antonio From an isolario (island book) of the Mediterranea... and many of them are Greek Islands, my new passion

[Lesbos and the adjacent coast of Asia Minor] 1590

Antonio Millo, 1590 manuscript Bound sheet. Ms. 31 x 20.5cm

Antonio Millo island of Andri, 1590

"All alone on my island with the pinhole camera, two hours rowing hard from the civilisation, I was happy. . . I was thinking of the pioneers.... Yes, processing on site, that was important. Polaroid film, the only concession to modernism gave me the possibility to do it. Have you ever tried to wash your negatives with seawater? A small amount of watercolour paper, impregnated with kallitype emulsion, was my printing paper, which was contact-exposed in broad daylight." Philippe Moroux

Tiny Island

Photo by veloopity's flickr

a group of tiny islands on the east coast of Sardinia, Italy. These images were taken at different times of the day during a week veloopity spent in Santa Maria Navarrese, seeing the islands from my balcony every day.

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and via thingsmagazine: some Gorgeous Private Tropical Islands for Sale and private island sale, and here

Unexplored island

One thing is getting clear to me, i'm mapping what i like and interests me, so i'm getting back to Alexandra mir's maps illustration (she also has some great instalation projects such as first woman on the moon and Gravity)

At Her 2006 exhibition there's a series of 32 drawings on the subject of Islands; political, geographical and mythological.

Treasure Island, marker on paper 150 x 180 cm, 2006

Island of the Dead (after Arnold Böcklin), marker on paper, 200 x 200 cm, 2006

The Palm, marker on paper, 200 x 200 cm, 2006

Wishing List

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If you have four days in July and £500, there’s a course called A History of Maps and Map-making being offered by the University of London’s Institute of English Studies as part of the new London Rare Books School, which looks like one of those expensive summer school things that people take overseas trips for-a wishfull thinking! Enrollment is limited to 12 students. via maproom xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Going on a greek island, say, Cephalonia - some suggest to be the Ithaca of Odysseus.

or one e of these islands or

here xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Every man is an island

From The Odyssey to The Beach, islands have been one of the most powerful and magical inspirations to writers... Islands work as social laboratories, says John Harding.

"an extraordinary amount of fiction has taken place on islands, for reasons that are both psychological and practical. In Jungian dream analysis, the sea represents the unconscious mind, and it has been suggested that the island symbolises the ego or the conscious self. Indeed, some psychotherapists ask patients to draw their own island, with the result examined as a self-portrait. It's impossible to be beside the sea and not feel the tug of elemental forces, the kind of forces that gave rise to the earliest stories." going through the Odyssey, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and others the writers claims that every novel seeks to create its own world and entice the reader into it. "On a fictional island, the writer has complete control, and if one of the main motivations of art is to make order from chaos and so make sense of the world, the opportunity is here in spades....Islands are places to escape to, not only for writers freeing up their imaginations but also for their characters and readers.....perhaps most interesting today as an early example of sci-fi, an island genre that had some currency in the 19th century, before writers discovered outer space . ". " The idea of the island as self. That's another thing about islands. Take a trip on one, and keep going long enough, and you will always end up back where you began".

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Alan Davie. Island Map, 1997 via artcritical

CALIFORNIA AS AN ISLAND

Around the year 1500, California made its appearance as a fictional island. In 1622, California was confirmed to be an island. It stayed that way on most maps across all cultures for at least another 100 years.

Nicolas Sanson, 1657 AUDIENCE DE GUADALAJARA, NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, CALIFORNIE, &C.**ROYAL JUDICIAL COURT OF GUADALAJARA, NEW MEXICO, CALIFORNIA &C. This map is the earliest to emphasize the island of California and became the model for the delineation of California for the next fifty years

Henry Briggs, 1625 - initiated one of the most famous of all cartographic misconceptions, California as an island, which persisted until the end of the seventeenth century.

via brainwaves.corante

Island of Relative Stability

by Sean Higgins

Map Approach, 2007 Inkjet print transfer and acrylic on Plexigla s48 x 48 in

Terraform, 2007 Inkjet print transfer and acrylic on Plexiglas 36 x 36 in.

Soliton, 2006 Inkjet print transfer and acrylic on Plexiglas 36 x 36 in.

via vertexlistand artfagcity

islands

On 13 May 1787 eleven ships, now commonly referred to as The First Fleet, set sail from Portsmouth to establish a colony in New South Wales, Australia. One of the unplanned but long-lasting outcomes of this event was the large number of outstanding drawings of aboriginal people, the environment and wildlife {PK - was thinking you might like IT} found on arrival as well as of the early foundation of the colony.

Views of Norfolk, Phillip and Nepean Islands, 1790

A View of Vandiemans Land the SW Cape bearing ESE distance 5 or 6 Miles

Views of Lord Howe Island, Discovered by Lieutenant Ball February 1788

The Solar Mount

The Samrat Yantra in Jaipur, India is the largest sundial ever built. Its gnomon is 73 ft. The sundial is part of the Jantar Mantar complex in Jaipur, India, one of five large astronomical observatories constructed out of stone by Jai Sing II between 1727 and 1734.

Mont Saint Michel sundial is an ambisious artistic attempt, to use the Mont Saint-Michel natural mounument to create the Biggest Sundial ever:

Mont Saint-Michel is a small rocky tidal island in Normandy, roughly one kilometre from the north coast of France. Rising from a hazy expanse of sand and waves, Mont Saint Michel appears like Man’s defiance of the elements and of time. A rock lost in a landscape smoothed by the wind. Suspended high on the rock, the abbey calls you to discover the wild ambition of its builders and of those who, since 708, had wanted to make this isolated spot a meeting place for all people.From the top, everything looks surprising: the prodigies of medieval architecture, the strength of nature, the light…

Laurent Maget, scientist at CNRS and an artist as well, attempt to grapple with the meaning of Mont Saint Michel took place when he secured funding for a grandiose project.

The french army were drafted in to erect 600 one metre square reflective aluminium plates on scaffolding bases, to form the shapes of Roman numerals marching in a straight line across the sands at the foot of the Mont. For the three weeks of the autumn equinox, these figures were swept by the shadow of the 150 foot spire of the abbey atop the Mont, which thus became the pointer of a sundial, its shadow three quarters of a mile long.

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Lost and Safe

Work by Michael Samuels

Rescue Me, 2005. from his exhibition at the rokeby gallery

"Samuels’ hyper-real model environments offer us miniature utopias. These are places which promise a blissful escape, lulling us into reverie. However, these idealised desert islands offer a double-edged paradise... "

Remote and remove. 2006, Resin and mix media

120x60x120 cm

"On first site his enticing seascapes appear to present an idealized paradise, empty and quiet, tranquil and submissive the scenes appear to be ones set out for escapist pleasure though on closer inspection the rocky land masses actually suggest a darker and more mysterious world; "

Save What you Can, 2005

"The seductive blue sea’s made up of layers of resin are initially gratifying yet Samuels is careful to leave the side of his worlds, which he presents on workbenches, raw; immediately the veneer of the sea jars with the reality of the materials and the commonplace apparatus from which they were conjured. Man’s quest for paradise is one for something unobtainable and contrived. "

Left for dead. 2002. Resin and mix media

60x20x120 cm

Microscope. 2002. map, Pinpricks, lightbox, 80x80 cm

Bad Moon. 2003. table and electronics. 70x50x40 cm

via new blog of artist nathan abels - who's art is also to be viewed

got reminded of Island, one of the most beautiful/sad song that i know of King Crimson.

Lyrics by King Crimson (Fripp/Sinfield)

Earth, stream and tree encircled by sea

Waves sweep the sand from my island.

My sunsets fade.

Field and glade wait only for rain

Grain after grain love erodes my

High weathered walls which fend off the tide

Cradle the wind

to my island.

Gaunt granite climbs where gulls wheel and glide

Mournfully glide o'er my island.

My dawn bride's veil, damp and pale,

Dissolves in the sun.

Love's web is spun - cats prowl, mice run

Wreathe snatch-hand briars where owls know my eyes

Violet skies

Touch my island,

Touch me.

Beneath the wind turned wave

Infinite peace

Islands join hands

'Neathe heaven's sea.

Dark harbour quays like fingers of stone

Hungrily reach from my island.

Clutch sailor's words - pearls and gourds

Are strewn on my shore.

Equal in love, bound in circles.

Earth, stream and tree return to the sea

Waves sweep sand from my island,

from me.

youtube listen

I WAS LOST

For the past few days, i've been watching LOST series; I'm completely captured by it. As someone who doesn't even posses a TV at home, and not thinking higly about TV all together, this series have enchanted me like a child being introduced to a Pegasus who came to visit him in an imaginary garden....

Or maybe it is simply the yearning for being lost in an Island such this