Feather Foiled Print. The barbs on the right represent the population of 100 UK bird species 40 years ago. The left shows present-day population sizes. Rebecca Kaye
Rebecca Kaye, also known by her alias Ploterre, turns idle thoughts that arise while cycling into beautiful prints with a helping of hard data and clever design.
The Edinburgh, UK, resident studied mathematics and worked as a data researcher, developing her art as a sideline. Then covid-19 hit, and she leapt into art full-time.
Her work inevitably begins outside in nature and arrives as a curious thought: how do tide times change around the coast, where do oxeye daisies grow across the UK, or how do the unique flashing patterns of lighthouses differ?
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“Normally, I suppose, you’d walk past something and wonder why that leaf pattern looks the way it does, and most people would just carry on walking and forget about it,” says Kaye. “I’ve turned it into a bit of a job.”
Ash Rise Weather Rings Letterpress Print. Using data from the UK’s Meteorological Office, each growth ring represents a year, the thin lines represent daily rainfall and gaps between lines indicate daily temperatures. Rebecca Kaye
Once she has an idea, the hunt for data begins. A recent question that popped into Kaye’s head was whether it was always raining at least somewhere in the UK, which led her to review 130 years of records that led to the perhaps unsurprising and gloomy discovery that, yes, it usually is.
Once a visual design has been sketched out on paper, Kaye then turns to a computer to sculpt formulas that contort the data into her design, merging information and form into a single piece that tells a story. This eventually leads to a finished design that is screenprinted by hand.
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