Val Britton‘s oversized collages use the language of maps to draw imaginary paths through memory. The Berkeley artist’s work is inspired by an attempt to connect to her father, a long-haul truck driver who passed away when she was a teenager. Britton’s cartographic interpretations merge what she knows about her dad’s journeys with what she can never know. From her artist’s statement:
Traveling, navigating routes, mapping our experiences, making choices at a crossroads, viewing purpose as a destination: these common metaphors link experiencing life with the notion of a journey. In my work I often think about how the retelling of our stories, the reconstruction of our journeys, helps us make sense of the now, and how the retelling is its own journey. Mapping serves as a metaphor for searching, an implication of the unknown in wide, open spaces, and a trace of how we see where we’ve been.