hands/stars/maps

In the form of a visual essay, these are research images (found, scanned, googled) for a project and grant proposal.

This proposed project will consist of 100 photographs printed through traditional black and white processing techniques. The use of light in printing seems crucial to the content of this project - light shining down from space onto babies being born. Each photograph document the given participant's hands on a black background with a representation of her/his astrological star map drawn on them. The photographs will be 12" x 12" each. Each participants will be demarcated only through the Universal Time of her/his birth and latitude/longitude of her/his birth place. As a working title I'm calling this The Stars We're Born Under - which is very related to the few earlier pieces that use the name of The Stars I was Born Under [1] [2].

Some things I've been considering are : romance in telling who you are - what you're born with - the individuality of each of our finger/palm prints - hand signs as a way of communicating something about you - what is passed to you from the cosmos.

palm print

palm reading diagram

foot reflexology diagram

hand reflexology diagram

hand reflexology glove

sign language, letters & numbers

gang signs

5-pointed star gang sign

Michigan's Lower peninsula

Yumi Janairo Roth - Meta Map (in collaboration with Andrew Blackstock and Casey McGuire, Pilsen, Czech Republic) 2007

Adriana Varejão - Contingente (Contingent) (from an edition of 100 unframed photographs) 1998-2000

Jeannie Thib - Tabula 3 (linocut print on paper) 1993

hand as example of how a topographical map works from The Boyscout Handbook, Tenth Edition, 1990 (these 2 pages, in the book I used while in Boy Scouts, are a major part of the genesis of my project)

Annette Messager - Mes trophées (acrylic, charcoal, and pastel on two gelatin silver prints) 1987

Annette Messager - Mes trophées (acrylic, charcoal, and pastel on two gelatin silver prints) 1987

Shirin Neshat - Unveiling (ink on photographs) 1993

cover of From Here to There by Kris Harzinski

planetary hand map from a 1964 Scientific American magazine via airform archives

stars tattooed on a hand (branding?)

Jane Hammond - Happiest on Your Hands (detail) (oil and mixed media on canvas) 2003 - at the Oak Park Public Library

Lakota Indian Hidatsa Constellation (The Hand Constellation)