Dead Reckoning:  A Site
Specific Drawing by Alyssa Baguss

Wanderlust is the strong or irresistible impulse to travel and explore. It is often driven by the desire to escape and leave behind the familiar to experience the unknown world. The internet has allowed us to wander to unfamiliar lands never having to leave the comfort and safety of our homes. Travel anywhere via Google Earth, experience other worlds through NASA satellites and daydream quietly while pristine images of the landscapes scroll through our screensavers. Alyssa Baguss’s exhibition, Dead Reckoning, examines this digital “wanderlust” and how technology influences the way we experience the natural world.

For Dead Reckoning, Alyssa will create a 360-degree landscape drawing based on research of the existing geography of iconic Minnesota locations using satellite imagery and personal experiences with these selected locations. She will draw directly on the gallery walls with powdered pigment, specifically plumb line marking chalk, to create a digital wire matrix of an idealized scenic view that will surround the viewer. The drawing will synthesize geological science, computer generated imagery and her own experiences of the land through lace-like hand drawn lines that encompass all walls of her exhibition space.

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The technology of virtual navigation is exchanging an actual experience for an abstraction of an experience, forming a different understanding and behavior towards the natural world. This technological window results in a setting that has become literally flat to many of us. It is this “intangible” experience of the landscape that interests her as an artist. Baguss sees this transition from natural phenomena to intellectual conception, as a signal to how our relationship with the natural world is becoming distant and foreign.

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Alyssa Baguss is a visual artist and arts program director. She works out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Alyssa is a 2015 recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and her work has been exhibited in the Twin Cities and regionally, including Burnet Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Rosalux Gallery and the Walker Art Center to name a few. Baguss has worked as a teaching artist and artist in residence with the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis Public School system’s Art for Academic Achievement residency programs, and with various art organizations in the Twin Cities including the Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum and the Rochester Art Center.

Alyssa Baguss is a fiscal year 2015 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

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