Tag: geography

Posted in Art, Common Place, New thinking

My Mind is Racing: looking at geography through a refreshing lens

Posted on by Edward Wedler

MY EMAIL THREAD WITH Dr BOB MAHER:

Tonight, I plan to attend a discussion panel at Dal University triggered by an article in The Coast, “In This Economy, Try Art“.

“The panelists will pull on narrative threads in “Strange Birds”, including creative ways to engage with the climate crisis, and add their perspectives on curation, academic perspectives on environmental sustainability and the ways art can bring awareness, action and optimism to the struggle for the planet’s future.“

I explored the backgrounds of the panelists, particularly, celebrated exhibition curator Ray Cronin and Dal U environmental studies professor Melanie Zurba. They approach geography through a very different lens than I have been used to — Ray Cronin through place-based art and artists, and Zurba through community and indigenous collaborators of our environmental spaces.

Then, to continue this thread, I could not then help but explore who, to me, is one of the most interesting professors I HAVE NEVER MET — Acadia U prof Dr Jon Saklofske. If there is one thing I would ask of you today is to grab a coffee and watch his 17-minute YouTube video “Creating Worlds Together“.

Here, is a really exciting way to view geography, literature, books, virtual worlds, and place-based stories; together. The type of work he does with undergraduates and a COGS-Acadia collaboration would blow my mind [I would jump at the chance to be one of his students].

How do I know of Jon Saklofske? He once requested some promotional literature/book posters we had when I ran The Inside Story bookstore. Again, I have never met him but his research mind-space excites me.

This then got me thinking … this time following a Jon Saklofske-thread into an Esri and virtual world.

Since Saklofske has delved into the geographic world of gaming, has Esri ever explored or embraced the type of geographic-gaming explored by Saklofske — especially since the entertainment world is such a large part of current culture?

I wonder where an Esri-Saklofske collaboration would lead — hmmm, maybe a COGS-Esri-Saklofske collaboration.

Let’s explore the ending “S” in “Centre for Geographic Sciences“.

Posted in New thinking, Travel

Niche Map of Nova Scotia Attracts 25,000 Map Views

Posted on by Edward Wedler

Now, I’m not one to gloat but almost 25,000 map views are the latest counts on my interactive plein air art map at tinyurl.com/PleinAirMap.

Not bad for a niche map focused on Nova Scotia. I should see the numbers rise soon since I have recently posted this map link to several Facebook Groups in Canada, the USA, Europe and beyond. It’s also a great way, to attract visitors from away who are looking for activities to do in Nova Scotia. Artists as far away as New Zealand are sharing my map. Think experiential tourism! (see Preparing for Experiential Tourism, Rethinking Tourism, and A Question of Scale)

I’d love to attract a COGS student and challenge them to scale the map globally where there are hundreds of thousands of interested plein air artists, urban sketchers, art lovers and experiential tourists. Maybe I have yet to attract any because I want them to use the Google Suite of software and have COGS students working with Google Map developers.

I once emailed back and forth with Eric Rhoads, the publisher of Plein Air Magazine out of the USA. While he couldn’t spare his resources, he thought the map was a great idea.

Your thoughts?


Posted in Art, Event Review

Plein Air Paint-Out Map for 2023

Posted on by Edward Wedler

Our Nova Scotia plein air art map grows with community user input. It currently has 19,000+ map views.

The map shows paint-out locations for the upcoming, outdoor (en plein air) painting season.

According to Plein Air Magazine, the plein-air painting movement is the fastest-growing movement in the art world today.

Editor, Eric Rhoads, calls it “the new golf”. Many tens of thousands of artists, worldwide, are involved in this movement.

Anne and I have founded two groups in Nova Scotia (Plein Air Artists of the Annapolis Valley, PAAAV in 2016, and Plein Air Artists HRM, PAAHRM in 2019).

We participate in a third group, Halifax Urban Sketchers, HUSk, and have collaborated with the Nova Scotia Association of Architects to hold sketch-outs.

The map, and associated schedules, keep member artists, event organizers, art lovers, collectors, residents, and out-of-Province tourists aware of what, when, and where events are held. We have had visitors from Europe, across Canada and the USA join us based on this knowledge. Last year I created an icon on the map to allow others to place their event on the map. It’s crude (using Google Forms) but it works.

I use the Google Map platform because it is popular, and well-integrated with its suite of products (Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Calendar, YouTube, etc.). Such a platform forms the basis of another map I am building for “Footsteps East”.

Our Footsteps East map tells the story of our 6,000+ km tenting and painting trek that Anne and I are undertaking from Nova Scotia to Lake Superior, and back. This organic, interactive map grows with text, and links to YouTube, Spotify, a Calendar, and sketches as we camp at each paint-out site. Anne looks after Instagram, Facebook, and Google Calendar.

On a final note, I’d like to say there are a number of improvements that would make such maps more valuable and scalable (and be monetized). If there is anyone out there who’d love to work with me on this let me know or refer me to some Google Map developers.

References

Link: Plein Air Map (tinyurl.com/PleinAirMap)
Link: 2023 Paint-Out Schedule PAAAV (https://bit.ly/3ZvR5Zz)
Link: 2023 Paint-Out Schedule PAAHRM (https://bit.ly/3ZvR5Zz)
Link: “Footsteps East Launch Pad” (https://www.wedlerfineart.com/page/36519/footsteps-east-launch-pad)

Acknowledgments

Dr. Bob Maher as our Footsteps East Geographer Mentor and Advisor
Jesse Millican as our Footsteps East field video and audio recording Advisor
Techert Gallery as our host venue for the Footsteps East original art exhibition, September 2023
A global community of artists supporting and following us on our Footsteps East trek.

POSTSCRIPT
A recent plein air oil painting created by Anne in Florida.

Posted in Art

First Steps

Posted on by Edward Wedler

About two weeks ago, Anne and I began our two-year FootSteps East journey in Herring Cove, Nova Scotia — the area in which artist A.Y. Jackson painted back in 1919. We logged this paint-out to our newly-created FootstepsEast Facebook Page, to our ESRI Footsteps East StoryMap and to our Google FootSteps East Map.

Here is an excerpt from the first map I have created in preparation for Footsteps East. The map pins look a bit strange, but let me explain.

The pins sit over some of the paint-out locations of members of Canada’s Group of Seven Artists. Each coloured square represents a different member. I experimented with several different pins and ended up with this design in order that multiple artists could be shown at the same location, without overlapping/obscuring map pins.

This map will help plan a travel route through Eastern Canada.

Zeroing in on Herring Cove (our first step), you can see that I have included our journey’s log and sketch on the map.

Also shown at Herring Cove is the A.Y. Jackson map pin.

Once we have painted at three locations, I will make the map and social media links public.

This coming week (21-26th June 2022) we get to meet plein air artists from across Canada and the USA, in a competition to paint the landscapes around Parrsboro, Nova Scotia (Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival). We are up against some seriously talented pros.

For August, Anne and I have collaborated with King’s County Museum to design “Brush with Nature“. This is where regional artists come to paint features of natural/historical interest in a LONG BRUSH event (01-18th August 2022) within Kings County and a SHORT BRUSH event (Saturday, 20th August 2022) at Miner’s Marsh in Kentville. The first Call to Artists has already attracted some great local talent.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anne is my painting buddy and we share this Footsteps East journey. Bob is my Geographic Mentor sharing his wit and wisdom.

REFERENCE

McMichael Gallery, Group of Seven website
https://mcmichael.com/collection/group-of-seven/

Posted in Art

Artists’ view of the landscape.

Posted on by Edward Wedler

Unlike photographers, geographers or geologists, landscape artists see their world as collections of lines, contours, shapes, colours, light and shadows. Identifying features is secondary.

pleinair_tupperville_10may16_90dpi_edwardwedler
“Annapolis River at Tupperville, Nova Scotia” (watercolour by Edward Wedler)

A geographer tries to make sense of the landscape,  looking at relationships between features to explain where things are, how they came to be, how they evolve and change over time, and how they interact with us. A geologist examines the makeup of landscape to understand how it formed over millennia and how it may change in future. They want to understand how the landscape works. A photographer captures the visual character of a landscape under different lighting and weather conditions at a particular point in time on photosensitive material.

The “en plein air artist” paints on location, mostly outdoors. Each artist pulls out their materials and tools and begins to work quickly. It’s like speed dating with light and shadow. The artist will look for one or two focal points. They will look at distant, mid-ground and foreground features to figure out what to highlight and what to suppress. Often they will add to or remove elements from the scene for aesthetic/design reasons. Their view of the landscape is an interpretation perhaps in oils, watercolours, acrylics, pastels, pen and ink, or graphite. The plein air artist also seeks to elicit an emotional response to the art of their immediate environment. I consider the geography of the plein air artist as the geography of perception.

The Annapolis Valley Plein Air Art group, to which I belong, paints landscapes throughout our area — towns, farmlands, and coastal waterways. Each week we assemble at a different “paint-out” site. At the one site, some will paint details of rocks in a stream bed. Some will paint tourists enjoying the sunshine on benches along a path. Some will paint distant hills framed by woodlots. The landscape becomes a collection of deeply personal, visual expressions and no two paintings or sketches are the same.

What can we learn from interpreting the landscape through artists’ eyes? One of my mentors, Vlad Yeliseyev, is often heard to “rant” to plein air artists, “Don’t paint a photograph. Paint a story.” Local Digby artist, Poppy Balser states in her profile “Watercolour is the perfect medium for me to capture the atmosphere and light of my local environment.” In his book “Interpreting the Landscape in Watercolor”, Don Andrews illustrates the magic of linking light, shadow and colour”. For me one artist may see a tree as blue, nestled in the cold shadows. Another may see the same tree as olive green, absorbing scant rays of sunshine peaking through breaks in the clouds.

Unlike the photographer, geographer, or geologist, the artist is the landscape’s chorister; composing a visual libretto.

Posted in biographical sketch

We are all Geographers

Posted on by maherrv

Everyone lives somewhere at some time. In a lifetime, some of us may stay in one place or culture, others may move and change places or cultures for family, work or political, reasons.

bobmaher_19jan17 If we want to change our attitude towards the earth, it’s resources and our place on its surface, we must become more informed about our ‘geography’; not simply latitude and longitude, but rather ourselves and the processes that affect our behaviour. Geography, in an holistic sense, is physical, biological, economic and social. It is spatial and temporal: neighbourhoods, regions, countries and global; hours, days, years, decades, centuries, lifetimes and beyond.

What matters is that we creatively communicate and understand our geography through our spoken language, our writing, art, music, and technology. This means ‘geography education’.

This blog is for anyone who has an interest in geography education. This could include teachers, researchers, citizen-explorers of our environment and creative communicators. The blog is for action-oriented people who are undertaking projects and creatively communicating their geography.

Locally, I want readers seeking better relationship with the land and sea and the local economy. Provincially and nationally, I’m looking to policy- makers affecting economic and natural processes, whether rural or urban. Globally, I want readers to share experiences of alternative approaches in expressing their geography.

I have been concerned about our loss of geography education in our schools and about appropriate use of technology. Today, my interests include extreme citizen science, “making is connecting”, geography experiments in writing, visual imaging and maps, the Sand County Almanac and a land ethic.

In closing, expect some future blog posts to throw out challenges and discussion points to my readers — such as “A Yidan Education Workshop” and opening up “institutional Geography”.

Join me in this exploration of maker-geography and connecting the dots.

— Bob Maher