Designer
Landscapes
by:
Sam
Schlageck
"Illustrations Inspired by Cartography"
"Similar to how photography replaced painting as a means to document a person, place or thing, digital satellite imagery and digital mapping have replaced hand drawn maps as a means to document place. No longer are maps used as tools to guide us to our destinations, that job is taken over by smart phones, computer screens and turn by turn directions barked out by your GPS. This has eliminated the need for paper maps and atlases as tools, and allows us to look at them instead as forms of art. The lines, the visual
language, no longer serving as a guiding tool, instead becomes a design tool, creating aesthetically pleasing shapes and textures. Instead of describing the most ecient paths to get from one place to another, maps can now serve as a framework to think about and describe a sense of place, a sense of history. They can serve as a record for the journeys we used to take, before the routes changed, the roads bypassed and the neighborhoods bulldozed.
My work aims to use this language to describe fantastic landscapes, cityscapes and journeys. No, these places aren’t real, but using the tools of cartography, I attempt to make up and describe places in a way that captures the size of a place that painting or drawing a landscape or a city scape cannot do. In a sense, I am drawing a landscape, but at a much larger scale. Drawing maps allows me to include features and details that might otherwise be left out of a landscape or cityscape drawing or photograph. It allows me to imagine and describe more places, and the lines between them, than a drawing of a singular building or skyline could."
Sam Schlageck is an Industrial Designer and Artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Sam grew up in Wichita, KS and began drawing at a very young age. An early obsession with garage doors led Sam’s parents to believe that he would grow up to be an architect, but then that obsession changed to an obsession with trains and then cars. Sam studied Industrial Design at the University of Kansas, graduating in 2009 and then spending some extra time hanging out in Lawrence, KS working for the transit system. In college he developed an interest in city planning, and an interest in public transit, which has without a doubt informed much of his work. Sam currently works as an industrial designer for a medical device company, and does double duty working on art when he’s not at work. In addition to drawing, he enjoys spending time working on old motorcycles, playing with his cats, and riding bicycles.
Opening Reception on Friday, February 1st, from 6:00pm-10:00p
&
After Party to follow