Blended Eras

April 2025 First Friday

Hello Art Peeps,

This month I created a paper pulp map addressing timelines— thinking about how the past is always acting on the present, and the future is embedded into our moments now. Knoxville is a special place, and as a resident I am mindful of how the histories of colonialism, politics, and planning interweave and co-create our landscape, which in turn affects our lives. Sometimes I wonder if it is all happening at once, somehow, all moments past and future together actually compress to the present moment.

Pulping past and current maps, and using them to render Knoxville’s Future Land Use projections maps in KGIS, is a way to get at this idea. I felt like I was doing some kind of magic, pulping maps— dissolving the actual ink renderings of places….for all you know it’s just random papers, but that material memory feels to me like it maintains power, even in its entropic breakdown and rearrangement.

The large map on the top is the Downtown Gallery Clump. The bottom left is a closeup of the Candoro Marble Building area where Tristar Arts curates incredible shows, and the bottom right is where Mighty Mud ceramic studio is located, under the south side of James White Parkway.

Paper Ingredients:

• Maps of this region and it’s inhabitants’ impressions from 1791 to current day, printed on scrap paper from the classroom (1791, 1855, 1867, 1886, 1919, 1925)

• Maps of Knoxville from travel maps and atlases 1975-current

• A few pages from a scavenged tattered book on quantum physics (everything is everything?)

• Printed google maps screenshots left over from referencing from past FF maps

• Dye (colors vary from KGIS key)

The pulp is made of the past, the roads and spaces are the present, and the colors represent the city’s future land-use plans as rendered on KGIS. There is string and twine embedded in the paper to create the raised roads. Something about how the roads tie us together. As it dried a few of the colors bled or look pretty dang similar to others, which I am bummed about. So it goes with fast-paced exploratory creations. I’m learning!

You can go see le map in person at the 1010 show! And thank you to Kai Mote for curating my work into this exciting exhibition, and trusting me to have this piece done in time:)

Sans Labels and Texture Views

THE LIST

• The Emporium (5-9)

  • “Echoes of Memory” by S. Alexandra Simental and Carla Taylor

  • “Birds and the Bees” by Roberta Smashey

  • “POETOGRAPHY; Blending Poetry and Photography” by Jack Retterer

  • “No Bigger Than a Breadbox” by various artists

  • “Seasons of Change” by the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Tennessee Valley

  • First Friday Block Party

• Gallery 1010 (5-9) “Cross Currents” curated by Kai Mote (where you can see this map in person!) along with so many other artists I admire.

• Arrowmont Gallery (5-9) “Botanicals: A Showcase of Work from Arrowmont’s Programming Team” by Kelly Hider, Mathilde Frances Lind, Lindsay Rogers, Alex Simental, Rebecca Smedley, and Heather F. Wetzel

• UTK Downton Gallery (5-9) “Kite Symphony” by Roberto Carlos Lange + Kristi Sword

• Dogwood Arts (5-8) “7 Decades in Bloom: Celebrating the Legacy of Dogwood Arts” (not pinned, but happening! Just less visual-art focused, this show)

• Red Gallery (5-9) “Old City Scapes” by Robert Felker

• Able Trade (5:30-8:30) Exhibition by UT Grad Students

• Rala (6-9) “Hello, Bridal Waltz & Other Musings” by Cynthia Markert

• Tristar Arts (5-8)

  • “Injury: Thirteen Studies,” by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi

  • “From Dark To Blue” by Meg White

  • DJ Soularia set and pop-up exhibition by Chase Williamson

• Mighty Mud (6-9) “Slandered Species” by Eldritch and Ursula Hall

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Not visual art but still awesome and happening:

• Union Ave Books (6-7:30) First Fridays Poetry Night featuring Alexa White (Free, but RSVP here)

• Visit Knoxville (6-?) First Fridays Live: Tinca Tinca (Free, live radio show)

Process and Context Images for Pulp Map

Dedication:

This map is dedicated to my late and dear friend, Kirk Watson. Kirk was kin and anchor, and had been following and encouraging my map practice from the start. He loved to think of how everything was also everything else, and the structures and meanings that undergird our subjective experiences. I miss you so much, buddy.

In making this I also thought about bodies; about where the energy goes when the body passes, and how all the ways we interact dissolve into the material and people we know along the way— I am honoring the parts of my spirit that mingled with the Kirk’s. With paper pulp, the bonds between the fibers loosen with water, and strengthen the drier they get. There’s something there… about bonds and water and tears and drying, solidifying connections and strengthening with time. Time. Agh.

I’ll be gone this First Friday at a memorial for Kirk. Catch y’all next time. Big love.

—Farkas