People often ask me how I got into making the work I do now, what first got me started.

It always a difficult question to answer as it wasn’t really a conscious decision.  It was the result of many things that somehow came together to try to solve a problem, though it solved a different problem to the one I thought I had.

The problem I thought I was solving was looking for a different way to use maps in the collage work I was doing then, I wasn’t expecting to start a whole new way or working!

One of the pieces I worked on which lead me to make my first cuts into maps was

Aloha, 2002

This piece is made from maps, gouache, pencil collage mounted on wood, it’s about 3 metres wide. It even had a sound track that went with it that was a found recording of the beginning of a Haiwian music concert.

Another piece that I made that involved maps was this one

Flock, 2001

This piece was made from a star atlas from 1938, gouache, collage. It was again quite big, about 3m high and a had a recording of bird song that went with it.  I always somehow felt the individual pieces worked better than the whole.

No prizes for spotting the theme going on here…

Bingo Parrot, 2002