JOANATHAN BESSACI

MEMORY MAPS

In intricate hand-cut paper maps layered through glass, Joanathan Bessaci examines the themes of transience, migration, and belonging.

Born and raised in Lyon, France, the country’s geography and roadways became a symbolic fascination for Bessaci. The child of Vietnamese and Northern Algerian immigrants, family histories were intrinsically tied to space and place as he traced their journeys to his new home country.

Bessaci began collecting French Michelin road maps in his youth, drawn to their vibrant colors as well as their potential for storytelling. Further compelled by a move from France to Washington D.C., Bessaci began incorporating his amassed collection of maps dating between 1920 and 1960 into his artwork.

Bessaci’s intricate artwork is predicated on a careful study of human and animal anatomy. Using the varied textures and shades naturally found in the vintage maps, he meticulously cuts away at the geography, using lakes, rivers, oceans, roads, highways, parks and city centers into his images to represent various anatomical and biological features. These cut elements are then layered between panes of glass, with his most complex images holding as many as seven layers. Careful attention to detail, meticulous surgical artistic skill and the passionate eye of a collector define Bessaci’s mixed-media work.

MORTON BARTLETT

Morton Bartlett, 1909 -- 1992, was a private man whose passion became public after his death. The adopted only son of a Boston Brahmin couple, he left Harvard two years before graduating with the class of 1932.

Various jobs followed, including gas station manager and printer’s broker, while he devoted himself to creating a fantasy family of perfectly sculpted children. Meticulously dressed and posed, Bartlett photographed them in staged scenarios, at once quotidian and dramatic: A girl curled up comfortably reading, dancing at a ballet class or a boy at the beach.

A series of large format original prints were published in 2010. An edition of 10, these will include Bartlett’s most desirable and iconic images. 

Artist C.V. 

Pinkie Maclure

Pinkie Maclure is a self-taught, award-winning Scottish artist specializing in stained glass. As a child raised in rural Scotland, she spent every night drawing pictures of imaginary people, but that comforting pastime faded after being named “the misfit” at school.

She gave up drawing completely until, after many years of unemployment, a chance of work fell into her lap, making and mending domestic stained glass windows. Interested in the technique but frustrated by the meaningless home décor designs, Maclure grew fascinated with the subject and the mysterious allegories of early church windows.

Intrigued by the cracked anarchy of medieval stained glass and the links it offers us between past and present, Pinkie Maclure harnesses the spiritual power of the material, using it as a language to tell a story in the same way as early church artists.

The distinctively chaotic nature of stained glass allows her to create poignant, darkly humorous vignettes full of symbolism, exploiting the tension between the sacred and the unexpected—especially relevant at a time when the end of the world can feel closer than ever.

Often using repurposed greenhouse glass, meticulously hand-painting the images, she makes intimate work that examines today’s social issues, such as addiction, insomnia, and our self-destructive relationship with nature.

Maclure's inspiration for these glowing narratives includes Bible stories, folklore, tabloid newspaper headlines, and her own personal history. She is also a singer-songwriter who has recorded 10 albums and performed internationally.

Her work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Scotland and the U.K. Museum of Glass.