The Solipsism of an Inverted Cartography, by Michael Macfeat.This is the catalogue of recent sculpture and drawings by Terri Saulin. Opening receptions: April 1 and April 15, 2011,6-10pm. Tiger Strikes Asteroid, 319 N. 9th Street 4th fl., Phila., PA

1. The Solipsism of an Inverted Cartography
TERRI SAULIN: SCULPTURE AT TIGER S TRIKES AS TEROID
“On Exactitude in Science…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the
map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of
a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds
struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point
with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Fore-
bears had been, saw that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they
delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there
are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other
Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.”
Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, XLV, Lerida, 1658 from Jorge Luis Borges, A Universal History of Infamy,
Penguin Books, London, 1975 ISBNo-14-003959-7
We encounter what resembles a coral bed are of a much more benevolent origin than these
but upon further examination it bears a family hybrids might imply. The process begins with
resemblance to an unholy marriage of disparate cartography. Cartography is the science or art of
elements. These resemble the exoskeletal remains making maps. It is also the catalyst that inspires
of an impossible and somewhat harrowing sym- the sculpture of Terri Saulin. Her use of mapping
biosis of human organs hosting parasitic natural calls to mind the work of the late Ree Morton, one
accretions of coral and wood combined with the of my teachers at Philadelphia College of Art, al-
impossible sprouting of the limbs and heads of though Terri was unfamiliar with her work before
infant humans. One can imagine Mary Shelley our discussions. Rather than using cartography in
creating this fictional aquatic homunculus, the its traditional role of simply mapping, the maps
bed of a bizarre coral colony known only through she makes generate a new and fantastic topogra-
its calcified remains. In its animate state it would phy with more similarities to a mutated coral bed
be a frightening experience for the scientist en- than the plant beds of an urban yard, which is
countering this undersea Frankenstein’s monster. the actual landscape examined. Often the original
Perhaps it is an act of mercy to only consider the product of the mapping process which breeds the
traces it left behind. porcelain topography will be remapped and those
The sculptures of Terri Saulin, however, maps overlaid on other maps and traced to pro-

2. duce another series of shapes. It is a labyrinthian
and solipsistic use of the mapmaking process and
an inversion of the process when the topology
produced by the map is mapped again. Like the
Borges story above, the sculpture of Terri Saulin
employs a radical expansion of the cartographic
process beyond its traditional uses and limita-
tions. Her prolific production of these porcelain
sculptures may realistically cover the entire small
area of land that she has obsessively mapped over
time, although their actual placement might be
subjective. The production of a three dimensional
topography rather than the mirroring of one and
producing a three dimensional schematic is the
inverse of the traditional cartographic process.
This process itself is sometimes again inverted by
creating maps of the porcelain topography that
has been created by another map. This provides
another additional shapes, which are traced and
overlaid to drawings and potentially more objects.
Once the initial information is transferred from
the mundane reality of an urban yard, the options
of mapping, tracing, and casting could conceiv-
ably mimic the spiral of a Fibonacci series, a math-
ematical principle applicable to many examples
in nature, that explodes into an orgy of the self-
referential reproduction. The system information
produced and altered by the overlapping, tracing
and remapping of existing sculptures can sustain
itself without a return to the scene of the original
landscape if she so desires.
Topography is both the starting point and
the end of a solipsistic system generated by the
cartographic record of her back yard. The choice fig. 1

4. of the yard as paradigm is an extension of her love
of her miniature botanical gardens, the process of
planting in general and the growth of herbs as a
future element of her remarkable cuisine. During
my visits to her studio she served lunch. What a
wonderful chef she is! I had some of the best meals
in recent memory in her kitchen, which looks out
through her sunroom to the garden that is the in-
spiration and the site of the maps. If she thinks
that I have had my last meal in her kitchen she is
wrong. Her gastronomic skills will inspire me to
find reasons to be invited to lunch.
A visual vocabulary of human-like organs
result from the tracing of maps over other maps.
They resemble organ shapes but they appear to
have secreted a calcareous carbonate shell that
left behind a brittle record of an organ not lon-
ger there. Along with the organ shapes are other
natural shapes, coral, wood, bone and the recent
addition of doll parts. The porcelain shares the
whiteness of bleached coral and bone, with the
gloss of clear glazes applied in small doses, per-
haps acknowledging the wetness of living things.
These objects appear to be generated by a natu-
ral process of accretion, mimicking coral in their
assembly. Hollow sea urchin shapes develop, the
porcelain giving them the ghostly look of coral.
Coral, the major point of reference regarding the
appearance of the work, is an animal that repro-
duces asexually or hermaphroditically. This is a cu-
rious subtext, considering Terri herself describes
the recent inclusion of baby parts as representa-
tive of reproduction or its absence.
The shapes are the result of the overlays of fig. 2

6. multiple maps of the yard. A vocabulary of various
porcelain shapes are assembled into what ends up
suggesting a coral bed. A major recurring element
is what appears to be the exoskeletons of human
organs, with holes that may have once been the
point of entry of arteries or tubes. They also sug-
gest the void left from the point other minor or-
gans once shared space that are now absent. The
organ shapes tend to be the central and larger ele-
ments to the sculpture, the point of attachment
for smaller elements recalling bone, wood, coral
and other shapes of natural origin. In the more
recent works the addition of cast doll parts leads
the work from a natural history to a human one
that never came to fruition.
I habitually do a quick analysis of a persons
bookcase while in their homes. A great deal can
be learned about someone very quickly by what
they read. The bookshelves in the Saulin home
are heavy on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
two philosophers that use the term “rhizome”
or “rhizomatic” to describe theory and research
that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry
and exit points in interpretation. The rhizome
works with horizontal and uses trans-species con-
nections, which directly relates to the structure of
this sculpture. In botany, the rhizome is a hori-
zontal root stem found underground. If detached
and broken into pieces, they may result in grow-
ing into an entirely new plant. Saulin’s sculpture
looks as if it is the product of a rhizomatic system
of vegetative reproduction, the shapes repeating
themselves throughout this body of work with
theoretical similarity. fig. 3

8. There is an inherent beauty in these exo-
skeletal works and a natural elegance. In a curi-
ous way, the recent inclusion of doll parts, which
would be innocent enough by themselves, create
a malevolence when combined with the shapes
that seem the result of the mining a coral sea bed.
Perhaps this emanates from imagining the par-
tial human shapes in the aquatic environment, a
drowned antediluvian world that could have been
fig. 4
pulled from a story by J. G. Ballard. During my
earliest visits to Terri’s studio, the doll elements
were not cast yet although they may have been in
the theoretical process. They were not what I was
expecting. They appeared and they did not have
the effect I thought they might when combined
with the other elements. I read them as adding
an air of malevolence and the horror of scientific
experimentation to the work. I am not sure which
direction Terri Saulin will take this sculpture in
the future but I am certain that if the path leads
through the kitchen I will certainly be following
her work closely. Her culinary skills are so re-
markable that she may have found the cure to my fig. 5
chronic tardiness. Like Pavlov’s dog, I find myself
salivating in the cab, anticipating her gastronomic
triumphs. I enjoy the sculpture but I refrain from
putting it in my mouth.
-Michael Macfeat, March 2011
“If we were able to take as the finest allegory of
simulation the Borges tale where the cartogra-
phers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed
that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but
where the decline of the Empire sees this map fig. 6

9. Top: fig. 8, Bottom: fig. 9
fig. 7

10. become frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds
still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical
beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness
to an Imperial pride and rotting like a carcass,
returning to the substance of the soil, rather as
an aging double ends up being confused with the
real thing) — then this fable has come full circle
for us, and now has
nothing but the discrete charm of second-order
fig. 10
simulacra. Abstraction today is no longer that
of the map, the double, the mirror or the con-
cept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory,
a referential being or substance. It is the genera-
tion of models of a real without origin or reality:
a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the
map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map
that precedes the territory — PRECESSION OF
SIMULACRA — it is the map that engenders the
territory and if we were to revive the fable today,
it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly
rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the
map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the
deserts which are no longer those of the Empire
but our own: The desert of the real itself.”
-Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra
fig. 11

11. Top: fig. 13, Bottom: fig. 14
fig. 12

12. Theresa Saulin received her
MFA from the University of the Arts and
her BFA from Moore College of Art and
Design. She currently teaches Critical
Discourse, and a variety of Ceramics and
Sculpture classes in Moore College of Art
and Design’s BFA, Young Artist’s Work-
shop and Continuing Studies programs.
She also teaches children at Society Hill
Synagogue. This past year, Theresa was a
guest lecturer and had a solo exhibition,
Lines of Flight, at Finlandia University in
Hancock, MI. She also participated in
two exhibitions sponsored by the 2010
National Council for Education in the fig. 15
Clay Arts; Artist/Educator, at Rowan
University, NJ and 6-III* Outdoor Sculp-
ture Exhibition, at The Haverford School
in Haverford, PA. Theresa received a 2010
Faculty Development Grant from Moore
College of Art and Design to prepare re-
search for the Night Is A Girl exhibition
at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, April 1, 2011.
Theresa’s interests in biology,
botany, classical music, geology, and gas-
tronomy guide her construction. She
builds delicate, alternating smooth and
densely textured, porcelain sculptures.
They are physical explorations of philo-
sophical ideas. Without beginning or
end, the sculptures suggest forms from fig. 16
nature but, just as easily, they mimic the
branching, burrowing, nonhierarchical
cover: Juno Walton
structure of the internet. She photographs
fig. 1: Lillies and the Milkeyway fig. 9: Drown and Drain (detail)
the forms in various stages of production. fig. 2: Juno Was Adamant fig. 10: BwO II
The forms and photos become her still fig. 3: Ms. X Explains BwO fig. 11: Persephone
life. The system of distilled information fig. 4: Ms. X Explains BwO (detail) fig. 12: Drown and Drain
fig. 5: BwO I fig. 13: Destro
provides an elastic and infinitely expand-
fig. 6: Wasp Traces Orchid fig. 14: Watanabe
able language that fuel future drawings, fig. 7: Ninsun fig. 15: Ninsun (detail)
prints and sculpture. fig. 8: Lillies and the Milkeyway (detail) fig. 16: Orchid Traces Wasp