Things of Desire

By Mike Landry

A detail of Sarah Kernohan's map-like drawing, "Chatter Mark I."

I can’t find The Postal Service lyric Sarah Kernohan mentions during our interview to explain her work. But the gist of it she tells me is about looking at the sidewalk wondering what’s actually underneath of it.

It’s this attraction to nature, from The Postal Service to our urge to head outside on nice days, that inspires Kernohan’s drawings. Working with various natural elements, Kernohan’s most recent work uses the tiny details on the surface of the objects and expands them into large drawings that look like topographic maps.

“I think we still have a strong relationship to [nature]. It’s just how we choose to absorb it. Do we decide to walk past the park and say ‘Oh, look. The park!’ Or do you decide to go and hang out and spend time with it. For me, it’s more about spending time with it than anything else.”

The new work marks a slight departure for Kernohan. She had been using blueprints with organic line to build maps in reverse. Layering lines on top of the blueprint, she started to notice how they started looking like topographic maps and she decided to push the idea further.

Kernohan’s interest in geological drawing comes from an interest in how certain forms repeat themselves in nature. Working from a rodent’s skull, sea shell or piece of bark, Kernohan likes to focus on not just the similarities, but the differences that exist between two seemingly similar surfaces.

“I’m really interested in surface detail and how that plays out. If you draw these things on a large scale they remind people of other things. They’re interesting forms to get into. And that’s part of the reason why I keep focusing on them. I keep finding more and more material in them.”

When completed, Kernohan drawings also look like pioneer maps. The line creates narrow paths, while the vast empty areas are representative of regions yet to be fully explored. It’s also representative of the wonderment at the heart of Kernohan’s practice.

“What I’ve been thinking about more and more with the work is about the things that we really can’t measure…there’s all of this stuff that goes on underneath [glaciers] within say a kilometer worth of material that we really don’t understand. The analogy that I’ve been giving tom myself while working on these things is, well what really happens underneath these things.”

And judging by her works, which range as large as 27×8 feet, she’s still exploring.

“It’s all based on this wonderment with these objects. But it’s more inconclusive than anything else. I can pick up the same object that I’ve worked from in the past three months, and in two years time and still find something new with it, And that’s what’s really interesting about the subject matter.”

You can find Kernohan’s new work as part of It has to do a lot with a thought, which is on display until Sun May 31 at Gallery Stratford in Stratford, Ont.