To the ever-expanding genre of artwork inspired by maps of Bernal Heights, Neighbor Naomi shares news about a very cool string-art piece she recently created.
Derived from the 5′ topographic map of Bernal Heights that local carto-wizard Eric Fischer produced in 2012, Neighbor Naomi tells Bernalwood how her piece came together:
I saw the post of Eric Fisher’s map on Bernalwood years ago and it got my wheels turning. I love textile arts (where my knittahs at?!), and my first idea was to do a quilt where the stitching followed the contours of the elevation lines.
That project stuck in my head for a while without becoming a reality (as these things do). Then I began noticing artists doing interesting things with nails and thread – Kumi Yamashita and Dominique Falla are two examples. The thought of the contour map came back to me as a cool subject for that technique.
I made an abridged version of the map with fewer elevation contours (every 20′ instead of 5′) and simpler, more segmented lines. That became my template for where to place the nails on a large piece of prepped plywood. Then, with regular sewing thread in several colors, I just started winding!
To make it a little easier to navigate between the nails, I threaded the strand through the casing of a ball-point pen, which actually made it feel a lot like drawing with string.
Special bonus! Neighbor Naomi also shared this fantastic time-lapse GIF showing how her piece came together:
Bernalwood 
Wow, it’s beautiful! Wonderful work and thanks for sharing!!
Great work Naomi!
love this!
This is very cool, and thanks for the backstory and time-lapse (with kitty included!)
Very cool, love it!
Where can we see this? Was it showing in last weekends open studios in Bernal Heights?
“where my knittahs at?!, “she asks. A skein of us are trying to set up a regularly scheduled knitting (and possible yarn-bombing) group at a time people with jobs can attend — unlike those at the libraries, which tend to be mid-day. Actually, we’d love to meet at a bar, like the Noe Valley group used to till their venue burned down. (NOT the fault of the knitters!) Interested? write jofalcon@gmail.com and let’s get those needles, hooks, bobbins and hairpins cookin’!