Buried Treasure: Jerry Gretzinger

This was an phrase I read recently as it relates to blogging. Buried in my blog, as is true of everyone's, are posts you have not seen, BUT YOU SHOULD :)  Posts get buried pretty quickly. I am reposting...resurrecting...one of these each week. There are artists, artwork, resources, and amusements that need a second life.

Jerry Gretzinger Exhibition at Palais de Tokyo

At the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, there is currently an exhibit of the amazing Imaginary World Map by Jerry Gretzinger. This made me pull out my post of August 28, 2011.

From a Guy Kawasaki tweet, I learned about this extraordinary gentleman who started drawing and painting little imaginary maps in 1963 and has never stopped, building entire worlds into three generations. The mind boggles. Read the short article here then enjoy the video. If you're not wowed, then my name isn't Jack Sprat. 

 
Jerry's Map from Jerry Gretzinger on Vimeo.

Hey, I retweeted this, posted it on my Facebook page, and emailed to friends and colleagues. This is one of the most interesting things I've seen anyone do. It never ceases to amaze me what people are up to. 

Translated text from museum site: In 1963, Jerry Gretzinger (born 1942, lives and works in Maple City, United States) drew the first element in the map of an imaginary world. Every day this drawing has been increased, extending a world and drawing the physiognomy of an unknown land, which gave rise to cities such as 'Plaeides' or 'Ukrainia.


Fifty years later, the cartographer is always working on the same document, which morphed into a space consisting of more than three thousand sheets of A4 paper. Every morning, Jerry Gretzinger draws a card from a game he created himself. It tells the transformation should realize: Add a building, remove roads, create fallow lands.

The world that he mapping arises from the development of the card itself, at the discretion of the superposition of layers deposited on the paper. These metamorphoses are collected in an inventory, memory of the successive stages of construction and modification of this universe.