Lyz Luidens: Detroit Atlas Fundraiser Launch Party
The Detroit Atlas is a printmaking, mapmaking, and bookbinding collaboration organized and facilitated by Lyz Luidens of The Prankster Press, and funded by a Knight Arts Challenge Match Grant. In order to receive that funding, matching funds must be raised, so The Prankster Press and Riopelle are hosting a launch party for the online crowdfunding campaign to raise those funds on Friday, July 8.
Celebrate the launch of this fundraising campaign, take part in printmaking and mapmaking activities, and to learn more about how you can support this project! There will be books and prints to buy, and a computer to make direct donations to the online campaign. Donations are not required to attend, and the event is open to the public.
Detroit Atlas Fundraiser Launch Party
Friday, July 8 from 6:30 — 10:00 PM
Riopelle, 1492 Gratiot Ave, Detroit, Michigan 48207
Learn more about the launch party on Facebook, and, starting Friday, July 8, contribute to the Detroit Atlas Collaboration fundraising campaign online.
About the Project
Luidens plans to facilitate free and donation based printmaking and bookbinding workshops around the city of Detroit (funded by this campaign and the matching Knight Arts Grant), using personal mapmaking as the prompt. Workshop attendees will produce prints of their personal maps of Detroit, and they will leave a few copies with me to be included in the final project. For the research portion of the project, Luidens will collaborate with librarians, information designers, and researchers to collect and create historical and data based maps of Detroit, which will be converted into printable blocks and screens to be used in those workshops.
In the end, the personal maps and the data based maps will be hand bound together into Atlases of Detroit. Binding together the subjective maps and the objective maps will allow them to interact with each other within the book, to provide context for one another. These maps will become inherently personal and will represent the physical spaces being portrayed by the mapmaker, as they’ve been experienced by the mapmaker. This project is most importantly a collaboration. The value comes from the variety of perspectives, the workshop attendees, the hosts, the researchers, the volunteers, and all the collaborators. Everyone who contributes to this project will be listed as a collaborator on the project website and in any exhibitions of the final work. Although individual historical maps and data based map (and personal maps, with permission of the maker) and small books will be for sale throughout the project for fundraising and promotional purposes, the larger completed Atlases will seek homes in public spaces like libraries, schools, or community centers, where they will remain accessible to the public, free of charge.