Where we are now....

 

You probably know by now that Jerry's Map was born in a front office of the Hoover Ball Bearing Company on South State Road in Ann Arbor in August, 1963. By the time I put it away in 1983, never thinking that I would take it up again, it had grown to about 800 panels.

The total number of panels, at latest count, was 3792. 

The sale of retired, archived original panels continues, and, to date, we have sold 860 of them. We continue, on Etsy and eBay, to find permanent homes for the remaining 1500 which are currently available for sale. 

The newest change in technique in the execution of the Map is to cock the axes for the 1-inch collage layer. The instruction cards tell me how many degrees to tip the main axis either clockwise or counter. Watch for it to show up in the daily Twitter postings!

Update!

 

Since I resumed selling on eBay and Etsy last December I have sold 615 original Map panels. I am thrilled! In a couple of weeks I will turn 79, and, while I am in pretty good health, I realize that I will be slowing down and that, one day, I will no longer be able to work on this project. Since I don't want my four kids to be saddled with disposing of the thousands of panels, I am anxious to do what I can to make sure that as many panels as possible will have found homes with poeple who care for them. My ultimate dream is that one day, long after I am gone, these thousands of panels will get reassembled in a monster show. So, stay tuned!

And many thanks to those of you have become foster parents to my beloved Map!

How I choose the panels for sale on eBay....

 

If you have been following the Map listings on eBay you may be wondering how we choose the panels to list there.

You may already know that when changes are made to a panel they are made on an inkjet copy and not on the original. Each set of changes is referred to as a "generation" of that panel. "Generation" might also be called an iteration.

The retired panels are used to make up sets of the Map. Currently there are six sets, three of which are complete. The first set is the Studio Set, the one being actively worked on by me. The next set, Exhibition Set 1, or Ex 1, was the first complete set to be exhibited at MassMoCA in 2012. Ex 2 and Ex 3 are also complete and are being arcvhived. Ex 4 and 5 are incomplete and atre being added to as panels are retired.

When a retired panel is not needed to help complete the last two sets it goes into a file of "Panels available for sale."

So....(we're getting there...) I use a set of cards (natch!) to go through the "sale" panels and select the ones to be offered. I choose two new panels to replace each one that is sold. 

Got it?

Jerry on Twitter and Instagram

If you've been following me on Twitter or Instagram you know that I have been posting those 16-panel composite sheets. I started at the top of the Map and am working down in bands from left (West) to right (East). The goofy looking post above was from today and represents a floater, an outlier, at the far northeast corner of the Map. It dates back to a period when I was adding sheets that were not contiguous to existing sheets.

In further news: my wife has been making cloth face masks, and we have been distributing them to friends and relatives. If you would like one email me at biggouda@aol.com. They are free.

And, if you want to support that project as well as the Map, you can take a look at the items for sale on Etsy. Many have them have just been reduced by 20%!

Thanks for your support, and stay well!

Go find some Map tiles!

I was in Philadelphia last weekend and placed 6 or 8 of my Map "tiles" on ledges along South Street. If you find one let me know! And if you want to be on my free Map postcard mailing list send your address to gretzingermap@gmail.com.

We have now made almost 10,000 (9498) of these little 2 by 2 1/2 inch gems. I give them away at shows and place them on window ledges, weather permitting, when I travel. Go find some! I'll let you know where they are.

And, while you wait to go looking, you can get Jerry's Map prints and cards on Etsy and eBay. We appreciate your patronage!

Thanks!

Remember these?

About fifteen years ago I started making these little one-quarter scale "tiles" of Map panels. Each one was two inches wide and two-and-a-half inches high. Over the years I made over 9000 of them! I placed them on ledges in cities where I was having a show. Or I placed them around the town where I lived. A few people found them and collected them. I sold sets of them on eBay. I gave them to friends and new acquaintances.

Now I am about to put them back into circulation. And I am going to make a game of them. Here's how it will work: anyone finding two contiguous tiles will win a gift of an original Jerry's Map panel! Yay! I will give tiles away with all online purchases of Map items. I will hide tiles and tell you where to look for them. I will sell them. And I will send a couple, for free, to anyone who sends me an old-fashioned self addressed stamped envelope.

How does that sound? I'm looking to launch this game before the new year.

Good luck!

Jerry's museum donations

For the past four or five years, since I started advancing into my seventies, I have been searching for safe homes for my monster art project. Never one to play by the prevailing rules, I started by sending groups of twenty contiguous panels (like the ones pictured above) to randomly selected museums throughout the world. The results were, at best,
spotty. The majority of the institutions didn't even acknowledge receipt of the gift.  A couple sent rejection letters but never returned the panels. A noble few of them returned the panels with a nice letter. One accepted the panels outright and thanked me.

I had much better results with the museums with whom I had a prior relationship. Nine of them have now added my work to their permanent collections. I am grateful to them for providing a home for project!

My latest approach is to mail out groups of panels to museum directors along with a cover letter which tells them that the work is a personal gift to them and that they are free to dispose of it as they see fit or to return it to me. I ask only that they tell me what they have decided to do with the gift. We'll see.......

In the meantime I continue to offer panels, copies, postcards, and "instruction cards" on both Etsy and eBay. The sales from that helps defray the cost of materials and the aid of a part-time assistant. Many thanks to those who have helped!