Pen-Plot Map
February 2026 First Friday
Happy three-year anniversary, maps! It was February 2023 that I drew that lil’ colored pencil map for myself, a year ago that I launched the substack with the 50 carbon copies, and here we are with a collaborative pen-plot piece, over 30 maps later:)
A pen-plotter1 is a machine able to take a digital file and render the image with a drawing tool clasped in a robotic arm. The arm can plot very precise changes in direction and placement at a consistent pressure, resulting is a bizarre drawing without the variable pressure and nuances of a hand. My friend and collaborator on this map, UTK Architecture Lecturer Julie Kress, utilizes the pen-plotter for fascinating stop-motion animations of simulated situations of space, breath, clouds, etc. We teamed up this week to plot layers of Knoxville road and architecture data, and then created a hybrid real/fictional elevation layer2 for the “art gallery topography” of Knoxville. What if the exhibition hot-spots were like summits from which you get a clearer view of life? Red pins mark the galleries, and the vellum banners hover near, suspended on hot glued pins.
View the two 17x20” maps we plotted in person today at BOTH Dogwood Arts and The Emporium. 3
THE FIRST FRIDAY LIST — FEB 6
Knoxville Museum of Art (6:30-8:30) A Two-Way Mirror: Double Consciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists ~ International contemporary Black artists
The Emporium (5-9)
+ time. space. ~ curated by Ashley Layendecker of Red Arrow Gallery+ National Juried Exhibition of 2026 ~ juried by Christina Vogel
+ Fired Up! ~ Lisa Kurtz
+ Fluid Art ~ Farhad Naimy
+ The Things We Carry ~ Katie Dirnbauer
+ Pen-Plot Map: February 2026 First Friday ~ Lauren Farkas + Julie KressGallery 1010 (5-9) Untitled (ceramics) ~ by UTK ceramics students
UTK Downton Gallery (5-9) Ancestral Objects: Holders of Memory, Space, & Time ~ Donté K. Hayes and Kevin Kao
Arrowmont Gallery (5-9) Knoxville Featured Exhibition ~ Annie Rochelle and Rose Downs
121 Gay st. Apt. #B (3-9) the space between the thing and the word: new work/old materials ~ Charles McTyere Parker
Details: This is across the street and down just a little from Arrowmont—there will be signage at/near the door
Dogwood Arts (5-8) Intertwine: Shaping Our World Through Acts of Togetherness ~ curated by Bella Thomas-Wilson
Featuring work by: Aruni Dharmakirthi, H. Atesei Cooper, Dani Levine, Lauren Farkas, Miriam Klein Stahl, Raquel Riemer, Ashlee Mays, Chase Williamson, Kyle Cottier, Lena Wolff, Rania Hassan, Susie Feinberg
Red Gallery (5:30-9) Naturalists of Late Capitalism ~ John Allen
The Birdhouse (5-9) Hunger’s Sharper Than the Thorn ~ Ivy Manska with musical performance by Ryan Dunaway
Negatory Gallery (5-10) Negatory No. 4 ~ 25 visual artists and 6 musical performances (Palatheda, A Certain Zone, Maspeth, Atticus, J.BU$H, UaD5)
Details: Fourth United Presbyterian Church: 1323 N Broadway, use rear entrance, additional parking is available across the street at Rose Mortuary. $5 cover.
Homewrecker Arts (6-10) Sunday Dinner: Works by the HAM Household ~ Ainsley Steeves, Mable Ni, and Hannah Jun Langer
Zero/Zero (7-10/12) sose v.1 ~ esther evelyn sorin & maxwell
This is a unique month— there are really good lookin’ shows in and outside the downtown clump— even the KMA has an opening on First Friday, which is rare. My attempted route is going to be Downtown>KMA>Birdhouse>Homewrecker>Negatory, and then > Zero/Zero…if I can do it! Holler if you want to join the First Friday bike pedal gang.
I am most excited for the curated and juried shows at The Emporium. One is curated by a Nashville gallerist who was incredibly hospitable to my students when we field-tripped there, and the other was juried by a Chattanoogan artist and professor I admire. But I am curious to check out Charles McTyere Parker’s work and the Negatory Show— I always love it when a new space pops up.
Happy traversing!
—Farkas
“I love shapes” — Julie Kress, repeatedly :)
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The last time I worked with a machine like this was for the Tilt Maze map, when I used a CNC machine to carve out MDF. Then and now the unflinching certainty of machine plotting terrifies me. It reminds me that one of our blessings of being human is that we can hesitate and consider; we can alter our course if something doesn’t feel right anymore.
For the elevation, Julie took a b/w depth map of the region and translated it into contour lines. Then we delineated regions at the galleries where new fictional peaks would appear, still playing by some of the rules of the roads and topography they rise out of. Julie was able to construct and patch in those peaks to make them enmesh with the rest of the topo map, which was plotted with a hyper-fine red pen.
Using the pen-plotter was a good fit for this month because I had the opportunity to have the FF map displayed in two locations: Dogwood and The Emporium. This allowed us to make two identical copies that are still “originals” in their way. Thank you Bella for your help on install!
Love love!