Cover of Atlas Dream Sequence. The book is symmetrical, the front and back are identical and the book can be ‘read’ from either direction.
First (or last) image page spread, showing a square ‘island’ map collage. The book ends with an inverse of this image, a square ‘pond-ocean’.
Page spread following the square ‘island’—a square island magnified, revealing a central shape, which is further magnified in the following spread.
Page spread showing image 10 (of 16).
Page spread showing image 13 (of 16).
Heidi Neilson
Long Island City, New York
http://www.heidineilson.com/
Atlas Dream Sequence
2011
Inkjet printed on Moab Entrada paper, letterpress text, handbound drumleaf case
edition size of 25
36 pages
11.125 x 11.125 x 1.5″
5.75 x 11.125 x 1″
Artist Statement
In my map collage pieces I try to remove the specificity of what the map describes so that the maps speak of general, universal aspects of land and space. I love how a mixture of big and small scales in
maps—-towns and continents, ponds and oceans—-can be combined to create landscape features without scale, such as a circular pond-ocean; the details of different specific places work together,
becoming ideas.
More generally in my work I seek to enhance our sense of place—to conceptualize a bigger context for a given situation. Each piece is an investigation, like a kind of orienting or positioning exercise, where
something which is hard to grasp or is not visible can be perceived. My work usually takes the form of prints and artist books, which sometimes are documents of public projects or experiences. Often I
use toys and other familiar objects, or common neighborhood features or landmarks as an anchoring counterpoint to a larger sense of imagined space. I like the form of the book for the sense it has of being a container which is, in being read, bigger on the inside.
Atlas Dream Sequence
Atlas Dream Sequence is a series of 16 collages made from maps, where each page spread collage is an imagined magnification from the previous spread—each image leads to the next in a powers-of-ten arrangement except there is no ‘ten’, no scale The front and back of the book are equal; the sequence can be read from either direction, either ‘zooming’ in or out. The images are symmetrical vertically and horizontally and emerge from the spine, and the book begins and ends with an inverse of the same square shape—the land and water map areas are reversed.