Work in Progress - California Map of the Body - I found an old anatomy book and a road map of California that belonged to my dad. The illustrations have an amazing vintage color scheme and the paper quality is great for collage so I was immediately moved to create a new piece, combining the map and the anatomical images to complement one another. As with most of my work, everything flows more freely when I come up with a title either before I start or early on in the process, so I came up with that before I even  started cutting up the different collage elements.  I decided that a piece of wood was perfect for this piece. I found a nine foot piece of plywood in the garage but it was too big so I had to cut it down to size manually using a rusty old handsaw from the 1980s. I don’t recommend this method to anyone, my hand got a gnarly blister and  I couldn’t feel my thumb for three days. Yikes. Next time I’m going to use proper tools. Needless to say the resulting cut was not straight, but fortunately the imperfect shape adds an uneasiness to the piece, so I’m not going to level it out with a sander. At this point it feels close to done but I’m stepping away for about a week and will re-asses with fresh eyes. Look out for the finished piece.