Claire Brewster's "Magical Landscapes"

At first glance, the cutouts by British artist Claire Brewster seem delicate and lacy. Her precisely done cutouts of birds, insects, and flowers hover suspended in their white box frames, casting finely limned shadows.

"Arctic Peonies" (2008), cut from Oxford Advanced Atlas.

On closer inspection however, it becomes clear that Brewster's perspective and wit are as razor-sharp as the blade she must use to make the precise cuts of what she calls "magical landscapes." Her landscapes seem to subvert our sense of what we know about nature and gently mock our attempts to control it through scientific accuracy.

"I'm hungry," (2008), cut from Chambers of Commerce atlas.

Discarded maps and atlases serve as Brewster's canvases and paints, and the geographic features become the colors and details of her birds, insects, and flowers. Place names, routes, colors, latitude and longitude lines, all trace the details of insects and other creatures we often ignore. Emerging from its source, each creature becomes a map of a particular aspect of the natural world. Yet rather than pinning down the natural world, the animals themselves seem poised to rip away our knowledge. With sinuous curves and lacy cutouts, Brewster transforms the scientific rigor of the map, challenging the order that we try to bring to nature. Brewster has literally poked holes in our knowledge, thus untethering nature from human control. Sometimes, as in “North America Physical Features” (2007), the insects even seem to completely overpower us, devouring an entire continent.

Her birds, often depicted in flight or about to take off, hang suspended in their frame, ready to launch themselves. They suggest a journey, but one with a jagged, torn map, a freedom from the constraints of human knowledge. They remind me of the trash bag twirling in a wind storm captured by the amateur videographer in the movie, American Beauty. In the eyes of the young man, the plastic bag is a discarded human relic, but unbound by its human context and swept up by natural forces, it becomes a thing of beauty, a part of the natural world

"Little humming bird" (2008), cut from Chambers of Commerce Atlas.

Brewster often assembles her birds and insects in groups, like archipelagos in an invisible sea or stars bound together by gravitational forces. The group of birds in "Night Fighting" suggests a savagery to the natural world that we can't control, and also a metaphor for warring nations perpetually fighting over patches of territory.

"Night Fighting," (2008), cut from Atlas of the Heavens.

I admire Brewster's work from a purely aesthetic perspective. Her cutouts are beautiful, well crafted, and funny, and they playfully reuse items that we normally would view as trash. What's the use of an outdated map, anyhow? That's precisely what gives Brewster's work its power, and which kicks it up a notch above the merely pleasurable.

Luckily for those of us on the East Coast, we can soon view Brewster's work in New York City. Brewster was one of a select group of artists chosen for the 2008 Chelsea International Fine Art Competition. Her work will be shown as part of a group exhibit at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit runs from August 15 to September 4, 2008.

For additional images of Brewster's work, check out her website and her recent joint exhibit, "The Nature of Knowledge," at Jaggedart.

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Inspired by Brewster's work, I tried my hand at a paper cutout using an old atlas of Wisconsin. I'm calling it "Iowa Flood Dragon."