Stefanine Posavec's Sentence Drawings

A while back now I visited the Millennium gallery in Sheffield to see the On The Map exhibition.

I'm a big fan of maps in general and their ability to communicate lots of information in a none textual form. After using OS maps and the alike since a very young age I can envisage landscapes in a 3D image quite quickly using good maps, something that has always interested me. Displaying what might otherwise be incomprehensible data in a regulated format to give insight to something that would be hard envisage otherwise.

The exhibition incorporated a number of artists that used maps in some form to display or express various forms of data, visually representing the data in colourful alternatives.

One particular artist, Stefanie Posavec's work struck me as interesting and appealing. Stefanie takes something we interface easily with, words, and then almost reverses the process to create a visual representation of these words, using Jack Kerouac's book On The Road as a source.

In doing so she creates more depth than the words might have by themselves. Well the depth is always there in the copy, but she visually represents certain aspects of the copy such as character changes, story changes, new sentences and makes visual representations of these and their relationship with the rest of the novel, to illustrate aspects of the text that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The result is a series of maps of various data sources, creating visual images of one of my favourite books "On The Road".

The work is interesting and provocative, creating a visual feast for anyone interested in either maps or On The Road.

Good luck for the future Stefanie with your work.