Week Five

This past week I went to the Bentley Historical Library to look at maps. I was a little disappointed, though, because I had e-mailed a woman there ahead of time to ask if she could pull some maps for me to look at (I told her my project details to help give her an idea of what I was looking for) and when I got there, she had nothing. She just told me how I go about looking for maps in their system. Well, that I already knew how to do.

Regardless, I did end up finding some maps but they weren't exactly what I had in mind. Some were kind of useful but I think it's important I look at more. Janie recommended I go to Randy Parrish's framing shop in Nickel's Arcade to look at some of his maps, which I hope to do after returning from fall break.

Here are some of the images I took while at Bentley:

Time spent at the Bentley: 3 Hours

I also began reading Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad this week. The work chronicles the author's time in eastern and central Europe. I think reading about another individual's travels (especially the travels of one whom I admire and find greatly entertaining) will be fruitful for my project research. The nature of my project is not conducive to a lot of research in the typical sense but there is a lot of opportunity for me to seek out visual references (like maps) as well as reading up on Berlin's history (which I am continuing to do, albeit at a slower rate), rereading my own travel journals and those of others'.

Time spent reading: 3 Hours

As per usual, I made some buildings this week. The two I created were Tukadu and Marienburger 6, which was where I lived. Tukadu was this toy shop one street over from Marienburger Straße and had the most beautiful selection of handmade German toys. I passed Tukadu every day on my way to work and for the first couple of weeks I did not venture in. I finally gave in to temptation and the day I decided to do so, my world changed. This store was AWESOME! Aside from their collection of toys, they also had a really extensive bead and fabric gallery. I purchased a pair of pink geese earrings with blue rhinestones from the bead gallery! Also, one thing I want to note is that although eye-catching and bold, I found Tukadu's facade to be rather ugly. While it might be appropriate for the store's contents, I found it almost too gaudy and I wanted to kind of mirror this in my own representation of the store.

I purchased these cute little cat die-cuts from Tukadu!

Time spent collaging: 9 hours

I worked some more with arranging my buildings, both on the floor of my studio as well as in Photoshop (which I mentioned in my previous post). Here are some images:

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Time spent arranging/creating the Photoshop arrangement: 1 hour

To conclude, I just want to say that since receiving comments and questions about my project, in general, I have been making much more conscious decisions about the papers I am using. I have been pushing myself to use only (or primarily) "Berlin papers"--museum literature, maps, travel brochures, store bags, food wrappers, tickets, newspaper and magazine clippings, purchased die-cuts, etc.