Seen and Liked : Miriam Singer – Built Up

There's a lovely show of drawings nestled into the back room at l.g. tripp gallery on second street in Old City. We wandered in last week and found these gems of urban mapping.

On Route, shown here, is one of the less dense pieces, yet it gives the viewer an idea of the language the artist has established to tell her story. Ms Singer uses a more limited palette on some of the smaller works that were drawn over a shorter period of time. One imagines these may have been the only markers or pencils she had with her at the time. Distinctive graphic forms make up patterns that build the cityscape of her wanderings — moments in time captured in unknown sequence unfold like travel maps for unsuspecting visitors.

The show runs through November 27, 2010.

artist statement from the gallery website:

My works on paper in this exhibition are intuitive maps and abstract cityscapes. They are collages where imagery, color, and stencils are stacked and pressed into the paper. My process includes a piece of folded paper in my bag that I work on obsessively for a period of time (week to a month) while going from place to place.

The accumulated imagery becomes layered and busy with impressions of the cityscape, similar to the density of a changing city. Often the paper is ragged and worn, showing time and history in the folds. In the majority of my works on paper, imagery and colors are enhanced and layers added by the use of printmaking processes, such as lithography, silkscreen, woodblock, and monotype. I use an etching press to further flatten, add, or reduce each drawing.

image On Route | Pencil and marker on paper | 22" x 11" | 2009