Further progress.....

The room is filling up! We should have the floor covered by the end of the day today and be able cover it with giant Plexiglas sheets. Timing is tight, but I expect that we can complete the installation by tomorrow's opening.

See you there!

Progress

We have been told that the Map will be delivered to Summerhall sometime this morning. Teams of installers will be ready! I have estimated that it will take three days to complete the mounting. So, we should be finished by the time of the opening reception from 7 to 9PM on Friday.

Come on down! The show runs from  Dec 7 to Jan 24. I'll post a link to their website. Hope to see you!

Waiting....

I have been in Edinburgh for a week now waiting for the arrival of those four Saran-wrapped wine boxes containing the Map. We haven't been able to figure out exactly where they are right now but have been told by the shipper that they were due to arrive tomorrow, December 1.

In the meantime the gallery, shown above, sits empty. By the opening on Friday it should be covered, walls and floor, with my work. In the photo you can see one of the sheets of Plexiglas which will be on top of that part of the Map which will be mounted on the floor. Visitors will be able to walk from Southport to Jackson!

More on Edinburgh

Paul Robertson, the Curator at Summerhall in Edinburgh, and I, with the help of Holly and David, are madly trying to arrange for the shipping of the 3011 panels which currently constitute the Map. The show is scheduled to open on December 6, but the details of getting the monster over there are proving to be more complicated than anticipated. We'll keep you informed.

In the meantime David and I have copied about 400 panels which will give me something to work on while the originals are on exhibit.

Chris Miller and his brother Nick were here from Nashville and Charleston, WV, respectively. They interviewed me with the idea of writing something about the Map. It remains to be seen what direction their work will take.

The Brattleboro Show!

Rows N1 through S7, complete from West to East,  now adorn four walls of Brattleboro Museum and Art Center's East Gallery and will be open to the public this Friday, November 1. The show will be up until March, 2014, and I hope that many of you will get to see it.

If you come to the opening reception on Friday please be sure to introduce yourself! I look forward to meeting you.

Meanwhile plans are almost complete for a show in Edinburgh in December and January. I'll give you more info early in November.

Stay tuned!

Another request

I need your help once again. I will be traveling in a couple of weeks to help mount the show in Brattleboro, and I am in talks with a European museum to do a show there very soon. While the museums pay me a stipend to help defray my expenses their money only goes part way in meeting the costs.

SO.......I need to raise money by selling more prints and panels on Ebay. Kickstarting without Kickstarter you might say. You send money, and I send you part of my Map. Prices start, at the moment, as low as $3.20 and go as high as $300 plus for an original first generation panel. Click on the link at right and take a look!

Thanks!

Another New Void Incursion!

A new Void has appeared in the city of Fields West this morning (map year 1086).

This largely unprotected city of over 700,000 souls saw the relocation of an estimated 15,700 individuals to the alternative dimensions inside the Void.  This portion of historic old town will be greatly missed by the remaining residents.

ArtPrize 2013

Yesterday I went to Grand Rapids to start the Map installation for ArtPrize 2013. I had reserved three days to complete the work, but I had so much help that we finished the 231-panel mounting in about four hours! Thanks to my helpers: Jim, Bob, Rick, Debbie, and Dylan!

I hope that any of you within reach of Grand Rapids will come to this event. Over 1500 artists are showing in 162 venues. The whole town buzzes with art, artists, art lovers, and art talk. It opens officially on Sept 18 and runs to October 6.

I'll be there opening night and for one visit yet to be determined. I'll be sure to let you know the details. My installation is at the Women's City Club, 254 East Fulton Street. More details at: http://www.artprize.org/jerry-gretzinger/2013/jerrys-map

About those cards......

Here are nine of the 114 cards which comprise my deck. You might have questions on some of the instructions, but I think that most of them are self-explanatory. Let me know!

The reddit AMA

I never like seeing myself in a photo, but I know that reddit needs proof that I am who I am, so......

Thanks to friend, Mark, who is here visiting for taking the picture.

My son, Lucky, will help me do a reddit AMA tonight at 7PM EST. I hope to "see" a lot of you there and be able to clear up some myths about me and this work.

Thanks for tuning in!

Dylan rides again! Another time-lapse......

I went to bed last night realizing that you'd probably enjoy seeing the development of a massive Void. This morning asked Dylan to produce a new time-lapse for us.

Here it is!

How I grew....

My computer whiz second cousin, Dylan, is here and was able to put together this first time lapse video of one area of the Map. I am impressed! I hope that you enjoy it, too.

A clarification....

But first today's panel: S2/E14. More blue water and sandy beaches. Just like Northern Michigan where we live.

That HuffPost headline, "Man Spends 50 Years.....", and now a very similar one on oddity.com, implies that I have worked on the Map, non-stop, for 50 years. I estimate that I have averaged 20 minutes a day over 30 years. I stopped working on this project in about 1983, and it was stored in my attic until 2003 when my son, Henry, found it. He brought the box down to me and said, "Hey, Dad! What is this? And can I have it?" I got re-inspired and took up working on it every day.

So, at 20 minutes a day and allowing for my 20-year coffee break, I have worked on this for a total of 219,000 minutes. If I worked 8 hours a day that would come to
456.25 days or 1 year and 3 months. To have "wasted" 15 months of my 70 years and 9 months doesn't seem too bad.

Blue Water

Oh to be out on the blue water of today's panel, S3/E14!

Instead, I am trying to deal with all the Internet attention of the past ten days. It started with the reddit thread on August 10. There were almost 700 comments, and I tried to read them all. My general response is to say that I am planning to do an AMA in the next ten days. My son, Lucky, will be here to help me. Maybe he will be willing to type my responses. I'll keep you posted.

Then there was the HuffPost article whose headline made it sound as though I had been holed up in a cave for the last 50 years doing nothing but make my Map. That put me on the defensive. I should have shrugged it off the way I do all the OCD and autism comments on reddit. But I got caught in the web. I appreciate the people who always seem to come to my defense. They are usually artists who understand and appreciate the artistic urge and process. Thanks!

TCFF Tile Hunt

The Traverse City Film Festival is in progress, and the town is buzzing with filmies and foodies and beeries. Maybe there are som Mappies out there, too!

So, I have decided to have another Jerry's Map "tile" hunt. I'll be placing a lot of the 2 by 2 1/2 inch cardboard mounted "tiles" of Map panels in public places around the city.

Keep your eyes peeled for them! And let me know here if you find one.....

Am I alone?

I think of my Map as a unique work of art, but maybe I am deluding myself. Some people have compared me to Henry Darger. I'd rather not be lumped with someone who clearly had some faulty wiring. My wiring is intact (self-diagnosed) though the circuits may be complicated.

Am I alone? Do you know of other artists who have basically spent their entire adult years creating a single never-ending work? Made a highly detailed, open-edged, 2000 square foot painting? Shown this work in its entirety only twice in his/its life?

Another post! Another show!

Two posts in two days! Wow! I can barely keep up with myself......

But I digress. A week ago I was at an opening in a beautiful new art center near me here in Northern Michigan, and I was approached by the members of its gallery committee. They invited me to do a show there! The details are very pre-liminary at this point, but, once again, I will keep you posted. What we know is that it will be quite a large section of the Map, will be sometime after November, 2013, and will involve local students. Very exciting!

PS. The image above is the panel I am working on today. I found the watercolor-y feel of it to be very appealing and decided, for lack of anything better, to head this post with it.

ArtPrize 2013!

It looks as though I will be participating in ArtPrize once again this Fall. I exhibited a large chunk of the Map four years ago in this international competition and had a fantastic time. I'll give you more details once I have a firm agreement with a venue.

For those of you who are not familiar with this event, it is a huge (1500 artists and 150+ venues) art competition held each September since 2009 in downtown Grand Rapids. The project was the brainchild of Rick De Vos who also donated the $500,000 prize pot. This year the pot, most of which is handed out based on public voting, will be $560,000. That makes ArtPrize the largest in the world.

For more info, hit the link at the right. See you there!

A fresh invitation

Since I haven't received any guest artist contributions in a long time I'm going to issue a new invitation to you artists out there. The panel above, now being integrated into the Map, was sent by our friend, Nancy Allen, several years ago.

Here's how it works: you contact me through this site, and I tell you where to send your 2-D, 8 by 10 inch piece. I can return the original if you want or incorporate it directly into the Map. You give me permission to copy your piece as material for collage and to sprinkle bits throughout the rest of the Map. You also understand that I will be collaging over your work to integrate it with its neighboring panels.

So, get in touch! I'll be waiting. Thanks!

Our neighbors' map installation

Our neighbors in Cold Spring, John and Jen, bought 15 Map panels from me a couple of years ago and mounted them in their dining area. To protect the prints from spatters or dust they put them behind a single large plexiglas sheet. I think they look great!

If you want to do something similar, let me know. I'll be happy to quote you a price for making custom prints like these. Or, take a look at what's being offered right now on Ebay. Some prints are as low as $4, and most are currently $10 or under.

Number hungry? Here are some garden-fresh stats!

The population of the Map as of the latest census (1053) was 16,304,885. There were 27 parishes and 416 cities.

The largest cities were:
     1. Ukrainia                  2,414,234
     2. Geo                        1,663,163
     3. Sabratha                1,033,782
     4. Wybourne                 990,212
     5. Leyemouth                800,363
     6. Southchurch             730,140
     7. Jackson                    586,034
     8. Nelleville                   585,795
     9. Fields West              454,782
    10. Plaeides                  423,152

As of the last inventory (2/17/13) the Map was composed of 2738 panels covering 1521 square feet. 1720 First Generation panels have been archived. The maximum East-West dimension is 44 feet, and the maximum North-South is 49.4 feet.

What else would you like to know?

A new show!

I have just been invited to show a large section of the Map at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont from November 1, 2013 to March 4, 2014! I hope that some of you will be able to come. So, mark your calendars!

I expect to show about 800 of the central panels (including the one above) in a gallery space that will accommodate the entire width of the Map wrapped around four walls. This will be the first time that a section has enveloped a whole room. I think that the installation will be very effective.

If any of you know of other venues for shows please let me know. I'd love to be able to exhibit out West in this 50th anniversary year of the start of the Map. Thanks!

A note on Map dating

Some of you have noticed that those tiny numbers on the Map panels do not represent altitudes but rather indicate the date when that part of the panel was painted or collaged. Those Map dates correspond to "our" years, and I keep a list of equivalent dates. Currently there are about 85 Map years to each of our calendar years.

In the early years of my Map-making the years were determined by the rate of increase in the Map population. A one percent increase in population was equal to one Map year. You may see some tiny hand-written dates on the early panels.

In recent times that system became too tedious to maintain. Also, because I can now print sheets of clear labels with computer generated numbers the number of date labels per Map year has become arbitrary. We are currently in Map year 1050.

An expanding Void

The Void Incursion which most recently hit the Polk neighborhood of Wybourne in Map Years 752 and 805 yesterday (Map Year 1045) consumed another large expanse of that city carrying off to another dimension an estimated 28,590 people. Taken, too, were over 20 commercial blocks and one rail station.

Since there is no defense wall in this area it is widely assumed that the entire West end of Wybourne will, one day, be lost to the Void.

Another new direction

On January 9th of this year I switched from doing collage in 2" squares to doing it in 1" squares. I thought I might get worn out doing it this way since, to cover the entire map, it would take almost 224,000 of the little guys!

But so far, so good! I love the way it looks. You can see its manifestation along the lower edge of the collage work above. What do you think?

A special offer

Everyone who buys two Map panel prints from me on ebay between now and January 31, 2013 will receive a FREE randomly chosen print! Buy four and get TWO FREE!

So, don't be shy! Start your collection today. And tell your neighbor or best friend.......

Thanks!

New directions

At the beginning of the new year I changed the system by which I move through the Map stacks. You probably know that the former system had me move top to bottom (North to South) and right to left (West to East) through the stacks according to the number turned up on my stack of cards.

To make things more interesting and random I now now move up, down, left, or right depending on the suit of the card. A nine of diamonds, for example, would have me move nine panels to the West of the previous one. If the number takes me to the edge of the Map I reverse direction and keep counting.

So far it's been fun!