Who wants to participate in an art exchange? Perhaps you’re quarantined or self-isolating and would like to channel your descent into madness toward something creative. Or maybe, like me, your work is deemed essential but without opportunity to let off steam at a bar or gym, you might benefit from a bit of a creative diversion. Or perhaps you’d just like a postcard with a hand-drawn or painted map and you’re willing to trade a piece of art for it.
I mean “art” in the big sense, too. Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gaugin, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, and Wassily Kandinsky all participated in art exchanges in which paintings were the traded object. However, if you’d rather trade a song, an essay, a poem, a customized mug, an origami tree stump, or even a pair of socks you’ve decorated with iron-on crayons, I’m open minded — to a point. I will under no circumstance ever display a piece of art which features Papyrus font on any part of it.
I’m open to whatever map guidance you’d like to provide, too. Perhaps you’d like a map of your neighborhood and you’d like me to include all of your favorite spots highlighted in puce. Or perhaps, as one artistic friend suggested, you’d like a map of my dresser. No request is too strange (at least, not that I can think of).
So if you’d like to exchange art, let me know — and if I have your permission, I’ll share the products of our exchange here.
and Alan was indeed a very, very large cat by Joanna Wang and a Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography Map of Taiwan
A Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography map of the Arts District awaiting exchange….
A Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography map of Downtown Los Angeles awaiting exchange…
A Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography map of South Los Angeles awaiting exchange…
Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, the book Sidewalking, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured as subject in The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, at Emerson College, and the University of Southern California.
Brightwell is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Ameba, Duolingo, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Mubi, and Twitter.
Eric Brightwell 