Suzanne Scott Constantine and
Lynne Scott Constantine, 2020
mixed media collage and poetry on canvas, 19″ x 25″ x 6″

(Suzanne) This artwork began with my obsession with maps as well as with my return to North Carolina, where I spent my youth. The canvas is deeply textured with acrylic paint, modeling paste and other media to create the feel of topography. In the center is an oval of a map of the Raleigh-Cary area, collaged onto the textured canvas. Around the oval, there are concentric circles created from transformed National Geographic papers, and later outlined in black to make the lines more visible. The concentric circles contain multitudes of meaning, from the symbolic age of a tree (or the artist), the various locations of life and adventure growing outward from the center oval, and the unbroken lines of connection, despite displacement or isolation. The poem, written by Lynne Scott Constantine, exemplifies the through line of the piece and of all existence: “We are made of lines/Lines of sight/Lines of flight/Lines of rapture/Lines of structure/Fault lines/Story lines/Life lines.” Each verse is written on a torn piece of handmade paper and extends from the painting.

(Lynne) To this map of Suzanne’s experience of growing up with Raleigh, North Carolina, as a center of her being, I added a short poem called “We are made of lines” to honor the way in which our experience of place moves outward from our centering places through the lines that mark and shape our way in the world.