Night Architecture, 2020
Lithograph, 88/200
Black and White lines and stars
Image Size: 14 x 11"
Paper Size: 20 x 16"
(reprinted from The Print Club of New York)
In Night Architecture, threadlike lines connect scattered points of light on an opaque black ground. Built on the concept of the warp and weft, the vertical and horizontal axes used in weaving, Night Architecture unites Victoria Burge’s previous explorations of celestial cartographies with her recent research into the repeated patterns, mathematical sequences, and coded notations used in textile design.
Burge’s interest in textile design grew from an apprenticeship at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia in 2017 and a 2019 fellowship at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, CT. With this edition, Burge brings structure to the seemingly random beauty of astronomical maps by applying the visual principles of traditional weaving techniques.
The preliminary drawing for Night Architecture is based on a page of the Atlas Eclipticalis (1958), a codex of star charts by Czech astronomer Antonín Bečvář. Using the points on the original map as graphic anchors, Burge creates a fabric of constellations. The overall composition retains a grounding sense of order, moored by the semblance of a grid. Each line’s delicate trajectory calls to mind a ray of light in the night sky, a strand of lace thread, or the organic filaments of a spider’s web.
