These drawings are rooted in the everyday practice of walking, combining smartphone GPS tracking apps with traditional drawing mediums as a means of excavating how a line, understood as a point moving through space, can be a mark made on paper, a series of illuminated pixels, or a path made by walking. These are generally done via walking the urban grids of Seattle.
I’ve been walking, drawing, and contemplating movement as a form of art practice for several years. When I began making these I referred to them as ‘personal cartographies’ They reference maps, but I think of them more as illuminations – of place and path. I can see the place from above, where I’ve walked and experienced a landscape. To see where I’ve been – I can say ‘I was there. That was me, in that place.’ They give me a sense of presence, of rootedness.
In times of unrootedness it is easy to feel adrift and unrooted from oneself. Yet in this moment, in this movement, we are always home in the Now. Thich Nhat Hhan calls it ‘Life’s Address’ – we take a breath, look down at our feet, and recall that we are alive. That life is meaningful and purposeful. And being alive is to always be home.
