Redstone Studios: Off the Map

Wouldn’t you like to spend a weekend of April 27-29th at a workshop retreat making a beautiful little map under my tutelage? Here’s the hook: the setting is the gorgeous wine country outside of Santa Barbara, California–if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, you’ve seen it on the screen in the movie Sideways. Our host is gallery owner Connie Rohde of the C Gallery in Los Alamos, and here’s what she’s arranged: you’ll stay in at a secluded vineyard estate, taste wines, sample local (fabulous) cuisine, and visit the magnificent Rancho San Lorenzo for Sunday morning’s final session. For details, see Connie Rohde’s website description.

THE WORKSHOP ITSELF: You’ll create a round map showing a special place in your life, your daily life, a special event, a journey (real or spiritual), or a memory map of your childhood home. Or maybe you’d like to make a birthday map for somebody you love–maps make wonderful gifts. The circle, symbol of the world, infinity, Mother Earth, and sacred space, is the perfect shape for a personal, hand-executed map. Furthermore, the round map–especially one with a central, important location–easily lends itself to composition, a help for beginners. Working in pen or colored pencil on white or colored watercolor paper, you’ll make  a 10″ circular map within a 12″ square, perfect for popping into a ready made 12″ square frame.  I’ll give you all the techniques you need to finish this map and start new maps when you go home. You’ll get hooked!

Here’s a round map I made a couple of years ago as a gift for my son Andrew and his fiancee Andrea–they used it as the cover of their wedding invitation. The circle’s central point is WeatherLea Farm in northern Virginia, where the wedding took place (great place for a celebration: check it out). Because Andrew and Andrea live in DC, DC became the outer point of the radius, thus dictating the breadth of the map’s geography. With arrows pointing towards the farm, I indicated where family members were traveling from. There’s also an arrow indicating the direction from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where the A’s met as Peace Corps volunteers. A simple map, but charged with meaning, and executed with love by this mapmaker.  As for the sheep, I couldn’t resist them–they positively bleated for artistic rendering!