2014 GIST cohort member Elizabeth Burden is a visual and media artist, as well as a consultant with 20 years of experience working with non-profit organizations, providing services in the areas of organizational development, strategic planning, program planning, curriculum development, and facilitation.  She has extensive experience in grant writing and fund development, program planning and development, staff and volunteer development, and media relations and marketing.  Her artwork is about interpreting and reinterpreting history, and features traditional and non-traditional media—painting, sculpture, video, web, and other art forms.  Her current work emanates from her personal family history, which she views as the quintessential story of the American West. Using the metaphor of the palimpsest to explore the multicultural history of the American West, the works begin with historical photos,  maps, and objects from museum and historical society archives or from her personal family photo archive, and are “remixed”  to consider layers of history.

The common thread that runs through all her work is to look at old realities anew, to confront those realities, reflect upon them, shape them, and transform them—whether through artistic practice or through community process, she believes we can be catalysts for change.

Elizabeth believes that mapping is another way of looking at realities, and that community-based or participatory mapping can be a driver of social change.  She says, “There is power in the production of spatial knowledge, as a tool for both examining power structures as well as envisioning futures.”  She believes that GIS offers powerful visual and analysis tools that can be used in neighborhood and community-based planning and in place-making.  “In working with GIS professionals, people in neighborhood associations, community-based organizations, and other community groups can become better at going head-to-head with policy wonks.”

She also believes that GIS tools can be used to make art.  “I have been really struck by how some of the GIS software that we are using in class creates very beautiful abstract art,” she says. “I look forward to ‘painting’ with these tools in my artistic practice, and to creating art from maps—even those created for more utilitarian purposes.”