TEXT BY MICHAELA MULLIN | VIEW IMAGES 

Mary Jones’ The Map Room installation is lit by northern light at the back of the gallery. With a focus on the urban land and mindscape, as well as a collaborative artist book project with poet Michaela Mullin about the geography of dementia. These works compel you to read maps, space, and our time in the world with a changed eye. A map room is a space to ‘read’ the maps as the stories of their authors. Jones has walled off space within space to create an intimate room for searching and researching movements she has imagined and created.

“Walking was the first notion of freedom I felt as a very young child […] Later, I was bound by someone else’s idea of where I should walk.” This observation by artist Mary Jones is such a surprisingly accurate explanation of her work—a delirious mix of dis/order and dis/assembling.
The central figure in each work becomes the core from which everything radiates, though less within a geographical radius than a mental radius. Using gridded paper of different-sizes, slivers of published maps, photos, text, architectural and figurative drawings, Jones’ allows her intuition about what to include guide her in “the way that thoughts bubble up while walking.” Images and words that make the cut create an interactivity, merging as reimagined traffic, offering new routes for the viewer.

The exhibit ends July 31st. Make sure to include Moberg Gallery on your route soon. Whether it is on your beaten path or not.

Exhibit Images