The integration of real figurative space (freeways, billboard scaffolds, and road signs) with the abstract space of the map has become Val Britton's personal way of charting the past. Her father was a truck driver who drove 18-wheelers across the country hauling industrial machinery. He died young, 11 years ago. Based on road maps of the United States, routes her father often traveled, and an invented conglomeration, mutation, and fragmentation of those passageways, Val's works on paper help to piece together the past and make up the parts she cannot know.

Connecting paper fragments together through collage, drawing in delicate, intricately marked layers and detailed symbols, staining with salty washes of ink, folding, printing, fusing areas together through an etching press, and stitching have become Britton's strategies for creating a simultaneous record of herself and her father. Pre-existing scratches on found copper are inked and printed through an etching press. The copper has a history, and this resonates with her intent to create her own visual biography for him. Often working on a large scale, Val strives to create an immersive environment where the viewer can become lost. Mapping serves as a metaphor for searching, an implication of the unknown in wide open spaces, and a means to trace how we see where we've been.

Val Britton was born and raised in New Jersey. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 and earned her master's degree from California College of the Arts in 2006. She has exhibited nationally and in India. Her work is included in the collections of the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, and the Library of Congress. She currently lives and works in San Francisco.

You can see more of Britton's work this month in the group show Time Lines at Mina Dresden.

Check out other Flavorpill cover designs this week in NYC, CHI, LA, LDN, and MIAMI.