Feather foil print. The barb on the right represents the population of British bird species from 40 years ago. The left shows the current population size.
Rebecca Kay
Rebecca Kay is also known as her alias ploterre With the help of hard data and clever design, turn the idle thoughts that occur while cycling into beautiful prints.
Edinburgh, UK, studied mathematics, worked as a data researcher, and developed her art as a side job. Covid-19 was then a hit, and she jumped into art full-time.
Her work inevitably begins outside in nature and arrives as an ever-inquisitive thought. How do tide ages change around the coast, where do oxai daisies grow across the UK, or how do the unique flashing patterns of lighthouses differ?
“Usually, I’d be wondering why the leaf pattern looks like it is, and most people would just keep walking and forget about it,” Kay said. “I turned it into a bit of a job.”
Ash Rise Weathering Letter Press Print. Using data from the UK Meteorological Service, each growth ring represents a year, with thin lines representing daily rainfall and gaps between lines representing daily temperatures.
Rebecca Kay
Once she gets an idea, the data hunt begins. The most recent question that came to mind was whether it was always raining somewhere in the UK. That led to her review of 130 years of records, leading to a perhaps surprising, pessimistic discovery.
Once the visual design is sketched on paper, Kay relies on computers to distort data into design, consolidating information and forms into a single piece that tells the story. This ultimately leads to a finished design that is screen printed by hand.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
