Art
- Sabine Réthoré
- French artist Sabine Réthoré works with maps and globes from a different perspective. Her globes frequently spin the world on a different axis; in her maps, north is often not up. At right: Lovely Place 1, 2005-2007….
- Nikki Rosato
- Wired’s Underwired blog examines the work of artist Nikki Rosato, who creates human forms by cutting away at maps, leaving only roads and rivers behind. Here’s her artist statement: Our physical bodies are beautiful structures full of detail, and…
- Early Modern Caricature Maps
- The Boston Globe points to Donna Seger’s blog entry in which she has collected caricature maps from the early modern period. “The shift from conceptual to more realistic cartography in the early modern era is a very evident and important…
- Sohei Nishino’s Diorama Maps
- The Guardian on the diorama maps of photographer Sohei Nishino, now on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London (until April 2). Last year, Nishino spent a month walking the streets of London — which, come to think…
- Ben Joyce’s Artwork Exhibited at Google
- The Google LatLong blog is the last place I’d expect to see a post about map art, but last month there was a post about just that subject — more specifically, about the fact that map-inspired works by Ben Joyce…
- Lego Cartograms
- The problem with cartograms is that they can be difficult to interpret: distorting a country to be larger or smaller isn’t helpful if you don’t know the size of the country in the first place, or can’t recognize it when…
- Maps in Comics: In Maps & Legends
- In Maps & Legends is a digital comic book series about a fantasy mapmaker who finds herself drawn into a mysterious world she’s been mapping. Kaitlin is a newly single freelance artist who is stuck in the rut of…
- Tim Wallace’s Bogus Art Maps
- Tim Wallace’s bogus art maps — maps of the contiguous 48 U.S. states in the style of various artists. Don’t miss the rest of his blog, either. Via @awoodruff….
- Coffee Map of Ethiopia
- Art Sex: “One of my favorites. I love coffee and so I painted with it, staining watercolor paper and creating a map of Ethiopia.” Nicely done. Via Fuck Yeah Cartography!…
- Stephen Walter
- I mentioned Stephen Walter’s detailed hand-drawn typographic maps of Liverpool (and London — which made the Magnificent Maps exhibit) all too briefly in this entry. Fortunately, the Guardian had a profile of him this week: apparently Berlin is his…
- Wendy Gold’s Globes
- Laura L. Sweet looks at globes by Wendy Gold. “The ‘Imagine Nation’ globes are handmade using vintage globes whose geography is no longer accurate. Wendy finds, cuts and creates the art that she then decoupages onto the old globes….
- New York Subway Map as Musical Instrument
- Alexander Chen’s “Conductor” recreates the New York subway map as a musical instrument, with subway lines as pluckable strings. It’s based on Vignelli’s 1972 subway map, which makes sense for this kind of project. It’s a work in progress, and…
- More Typographic Maps
- Spatial Analysis’s roundup of typographical maps — that is, maps made entirely of textual elements — includes Axis Maps’s typographic map of San Francisco (above) and Stephen Walter’s incredible hand-drawn map of Liverpool. Via @worldmapper. Previously: Typographic Maps of…
- Eve Bailey
- Eve Bailey’s recent drawings are, she says, “inspired by the similarities between the infrastructure systems of cities and the human anatomy. I am specifically interested by the organic nature of architectural renderings. The iconography used for urban planning intersects…
- Armelle Caron
- French artist Armelle Caron uses maps in a couple of ways. First, have a look at her organized city maps, executed between 2005 and 2008, in which city blocks are taken apart and organized into neat rows. She does…
- NYT Reviews Katonah Map Exhibition
- Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art, an exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art that I first told you about in September, has been reviewed in the New York Times. “The works in this terrific exhibition offer so many…
- Hand-Drawn Map Exhibition in Philadelphia Area
- Another exhibition of hand-drawn maps is now under way in the Philadelphia area: Nowhere: Selections from the Files of the Hand Drawn Map Association runs until December 19, 2010 at Arcadia University’s art gallery. Curated by HDMA founder Kris…
- Map Art Exhibition in Dayton, Ohio: Constructed Territory
- Constructed Territory, an art exhibition by “artists who incorporate maps, cartography, and topographical examination into their work,” runs until January 9, 2011, at Wright State University’s Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries in Dayton, Ohio. This exhibit will feature 32 artists…
- Review: From Here to There
- From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association by Kris Harzinski Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. Paperback, 224 pp. ISBN 978-1-56898-882-5 The Hand Drawn Map Association has come a long way since I first encountered it…
- Maps on Copper Bracelets
- Etsy seller fugudesigns has a number of interesting copper cuffs, many of which have etched city maps, subway maps, or subway stops in their design. Chicago, Detroit and New York are featured. $50 apiece. Via Cartophile….
- Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art
- Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art, an exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York (north of NYC), features paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, a sound installation, and a live web terminal to address such…
- Reuters on Hand-Drawn Maps
- This Reuters article on hand-drawn maps is already turning up in a number of newspapers and other media outlets. Broad in scope, it touches on two things of interest. First, the publication of the book of collected maps from…
- Rebecca Krinke Maps Joy and Pain
- The University of Minnesota’s UMNews on Rebecca Krinke’s public art installation, Unseen/Seen: The Mapping of Joy and Pain: On the surface (both literally and figuratively) Rebecca Krinke’s latest public art piece is simply a giant laser-cut map of Minneapolis and…
- Fata Morgana: A Map Minus Everything Except Labels
- Damon Zucconi’s Fata Morgana strips Google Maps of all the imagery — no coastlines, bodies of water, or roads — leaving only the labels behind. Zoom out and all you see is country names; zoom in close enough and you…
- Map Lampshades
- Lampshade designer Sarah Walker makes lampshades out of maps. She’s used Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew maps, likes using out-of-date maps “because I prefer the look of the print colours and enjoy the recycling aspect,” and even applies strips of…
- Daily Serving on Whose Map Is It?
- Daily Serving takes a look at an exhibition I told you about in May: Whose Map Is It? New Mapping by Contemporary Artists, at Rivington Place in London until July 24. Thanks to Heather Kinsinger for the link. Previously: Map…
- Twenty-Five GPS Devices, One Windshield
- Crossroads, a short video by Garvin Nolte, is a piece of installation art in which a driver drives around with 25, count ’em, 25 GPS navigation devices giving voice directions — a comment, says Nolte, on “the influence of…
- Map Art Exhibition in London: Whose Map Is It?
- Whose Map Is It? is a map art exhibition taking place at Rivington Place in London from June 2 to July 24, 2010. It features work from nine contemporary artists who “question the underlying structures and hierarchies that inform traditional…
- Shannon Rankin
- Shannon Rankin slices up maps to create new forms: “While bearing traces of the original form, I deconstruct maps to create new geographies, suggesting the potential for a broader landscape.” Her portfolio is extensive (and is also reproduced on…
- Jason LaFerrera’s Wildlife Map Collages
- Jason LaFerrera makes images of wildlife out of collages out of old maps. From Jason’s artist statement: “The textures and contours of old maps are fascinating, even the tattered and stained parts. In this series, I digitally manipulate cartographic…
- Kevin Van Aelst: Apple Globe
- Kevin Van Aelst photographs “common artifacts and scenes from everyday life, which have been rearranged, assembled, and constructed into various forms, patterns, and illustrations.” His Apple Globe (2007) is of obvious interest to us; see also what he does…
- Christoph Niemann: My Way
- Don’t miss illustrator Christoph Niemann’s collection of whimsical map art, using the lines and symbols from a certain familiar online mapping service. Some illustrate the difficulty from getting from certain points A to certain points B, others create an…
- Geotagging Art
- Geocoded Art geotags public-domain paintings of identifiable locations. The site requires that “a) the image is a recognizable depiction of [a] specific location (not just ‘Tuscan countryside’); and b) the image be in the public domain,” but does not include…
- Off the Map: Seattle-Area Map Art Exhibition
- An exhibition of map art titled Off the Map opens February 12 at the Kirkland Art Centre in Kirkland, Washington (a suburb of Seattle). “Recognizing our increasing dependency on maps, the artists in Off the Map present alternative perspectives and…
- Chicago Transit Authority Foot Tattoo
- An interesting story on the website of Chicago-area antique map store George Ritzlin Antique Maps and Prints: “The most unusual map we’ve ever encountered recently walked (literally) into our gallery. A nice young woman mentioned in the course of…
- Cool Globes
- Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet is a travelling public art exhibit about global warming that for some reason is in Copenhagen right now. The exhibit “will feature over 25 super-sized Cool Globes, each conveying a different…
- Circulation Map Wins Advocacy Group Poster Contest
- Health-care advocacy group Public Option Please chose Amy Martin’s map of the United States showing blood vessels coursing across the country as the winner of their poster contest. Via Cartophilia….
- Keith Thompson’s Caricature Map of Europe
- Caricature maps usually belong to a specific period — i.e., the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So it’s interesting to see Keith Thompson’s modern take on a 1914 caricature map of Europe. Via Kottke. Update (Feb. 3, 2010):…
- Map Art on the Radio
- KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio’s Weekday spent an hour last Thursday morning on maps and art; the program featured Katharine Harmon, two local artists whose work appeared in her latest book, and a local art historian. Via All Points Blog….
- Calendria
- Like Cartophilia, designer Elizabeth Daggar sent me a copy of her unusual project, Calendria, the full title of which is the World Atlas of Calendria for the Year 2010 of the Common Era, as Observed and Faithfully Recorded by…
- Nunannguaq: In the Likeness of the Earth
- At the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, north of Toronto, until January 17, 2010, an exhibition of Cape Dorset art: Nunannguaq: In the Likeness of the Earth: In Inuktitut, the word Nunannguaq translates into “in the likeness of the…
- The Map as Art
- The National Post takes a look at Katharine Harmon’s new book, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, which I briefly mentioned back in August. Via AnyGeo. Meanwhile, a related exhibition curated by Harmon along with Christopher Henry,…
- Map Cuts
- Etsy seller studiokmo produces interesting map cuts — maps of cities where the city blocks are cut out, leaving a transparent lattice of streets. So far, she’s produced maps of New York and Paris; London is next, and she…
- United Steaks of America
- Via Cartophilia: Dominic Episcopo’s United Steaks of America….
- Even More Book Reviews
- The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reviews Colin Ellard’s book on how people (and animals) navigate, You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall (in Canada, it has been published as Where…
- Paul Morstad
- Painter and illustrator Paul Morstad “looks to the details to see the bigger picture, turning his obsessions with maps, zoology and our ever-changing environment into art that would have even the least cartography-minded moving in for closer inspection,” Montreal’s…
- Fernando Vicente
- The art of Fernando Vicente includes his Atlas series — paintings on maps. I can’t say anything more about this: everything’s in Spanish. But I can still be impressed. Via La Cartoteca….
- Butterflies Made of Maps
- Image Surgery takes maps and charts and shapes them into butterflies, then arranges them like butterflies on pins in a case. They’re for sale, for several hundred pounds and up. Via Cartophilia….
- Ross Racine
- Surprisingly, Ross Racine’s artwork is drawn freehand on a computer; “my works do not contain photographs or scanned material,” he says, but you’d be hard pressed to tell. “The subjects of my recent work may be interpreted as models…
- Atlas Art
- An exhibition at Jonathan Potter Limited in London, running until June 19: Atlas Art — An Exhibition of Decorative Atlas Titlepages: Decorative titlepages appeared at the beginning of many atlases and geographical works from the mid-sixteenth century onwards as a…
- Kate MccGwire: Insular
- I’m fascinated by Kate MccGwire’s Insular (2008): 50 layers of paper, burned to form the shapes of the American continents; the layers are reminiscent of topo map contours. Via Platial….
- Maps of Imaginary Places: A Roundup
- Kidlandia is an interactive map builder that allows you to create custom fantasy maps for children; you choose from one of four maps (which seems rather limited to me), which you customize with your own place names. Prices for…
- ‘Entropa’ Will Be Removed Early
- “Entropa,” the controversial piece poking fun at European stereotypes that was installed earlier this year in the European Council building, will be removed two months ahead of schedule, but not because of any controversy. The artist, David Černý, is pulling…
- Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map
- An update on Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map (see previous entry): the exhibition, which now has a rather challenging Web site, will run from May 16 to June 30 at the g727 gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Via MapHist….
- MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map
- In an article posted on the ABAA’s Web site, Elisabeth Burdon of oldimprints.com argues that MacDonald Gill, the artist responsible for the 1913 Wonderground Map of London Town, had a “profound” influence on later pictorial mapmaking. “Not only did…
- ‘Dead Pixel in Google Earth’
- Dead Pixel in Google Earth (2008) is a work of concept art by Helmut Smits; the 82×82-centimetre square of burned grass represents one pixel from an altitude of one kilometre. Via La Cartoteca. (Photo credit: Jeroen Wandemaker.)…
- Miguel Angel Rios: A Dangerous Cartography
- The Santa Fe New Mexican has a review of A Dangerous Cartography, an exhibition by Miguel Angel Rios taking place at the EVO Gallery in Santa Fe. From the review: “His large-scale maps — collages made with raw canvas,…
- Val Britton
- Val Britton was interviewed in this week’s Salt Lake City Fine Arts Examiner. Britton makes “immersive collaged drawings that draw on the language of maps,” according to her artist’s statement. “Based on road maps of the U.S., routes my…
- Rachel Austin
- An exhibition of the artwork of Rachel Austin is taking place at Tilde, a store in Portland, Oregon, until the end of March. Austin’s work includes mixed media map paintings. “The map series are done with maps and layers…
- Emma McNally
- Emma McNally writes to tell us about her drawings inspired by cartography. (At right, Field 3, graphite on paper, 220 cm × 150 cm.) From the press release for her exhibition last year: But though one’s initial impression may…
- Map Corsets
- Representations of maps seem to be a popular source material for corset makers: Mayfaire Moon is releasing a corset in honour of the publication of Catherynne M. Valente’s new fantasy novel, Palimpsest; ProfMaelstromme offers an underbust “steampunk map corset”…
- USDemocrazy.net
- USDemocrazy.net, a project of the UMBC’s Imaging Research Center that aims to explain the U.S. electoral process (it seems to be a work in progress), opens with this crazy map of the United States — the handiwork, I presume,…
- Twelve Animals
- Behold Kentaro Nagai’s Twelve Animals, where the world’s continents and islands are rearranged to resemble the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. The shapes the continents form aren’t always easy to recognize. It’s also kind of neat to see,…
- Lordy Rodriguez: States of America
- Lordy Rodriguez: States of America, which runs from February 21 to May 17 at the Austin Museum of Art, “is the culmination of a multi-year project to systematically reconfigure the United States of America, including all fifty states as…
- Sports Illustrated Body Painted Maps
- Brooklyn Decker’s turn (slightly NSFW) in the 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is not the first example of body painting using map imagery, not even in SI. Body painter Joanne Gair, who did the artwork on Decker, painted a world…
- Photocartographies: Call for Submissions
- The curators of an upcoming exhibition that combines photography and cartography are looking for submissions: This exhibition reveals mapping itself as a generative process of knowledge creation, a liberatory method for re-imagining and re-imaging our world, its built and natural…
- Circling Cartography
- Circling Cartography, an exhibition of the work of Marie DesMarais, is taking place this month at the Proximity Gallery in Fishtown, Philadelphia. “The almost whimsical forms and colors combine with found materials including paper, fabric, wood and glass to create…
- Envisioning Maps
- Envisioning Maps is an exhibition at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York. I’m not sure how long it runs: the museum’s page says it runs until June 26; the ArtInfo page says it closes, um,…
- Czech President Blasts ‘Entropa’
- The controversy over David Cerny’s “Entropa” exhibit continues. AFP: “Czech President Václav Klaus has asked the government in a letter to ‘publicly disavow’ a controversial EU art exhibit displayed in Brussels that depicts stereotypes of member countries.” I think we…
- Lauren Simone
- An exhibition of Lauren Simone’s art has been going on this month in Portland, Maine. Simone, a local artist, “creates maps from her imagination with ink, tea, and watercolors, marking her boundaries with thread. Her maps discover places you…
- David Cerny Defends ‘Entropa’
- At the beginning of this video, artist David Cerny explains his controversial installation piece, “Entropa,” which just debuted, to no considerable uproar, in the European Council building in Brussels. The video is also an opportunity to get a good…
- The Map: Navigating the Present
- I don’t imagine many of my readers are able to make it to the rather northerly Swedish city of Umeå in the next month or so, but in the event that you are, Umeå University’s Bildmuseet (art museum) has…
- European Stereotypes in EU Installation Piece
- To commemorate the Czech Republic’s six-month turn at the EU presidency, an art installation piece portraying maps of European countries by their stereotypes has been installed in the European Council building. “France’s map is emblazoned with the word GREVE! (French…
- Rebecca Riley
- Rebecca Riley writes to let us know that a show of her recent map paintings is taking place at the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery in New York. 75 Mile Radius runs from January 13 to March 2. The subject of…
- Map Quilts by Leah Evans
- Textile artist Leah Evans makes hand-sewn map quilts. The maps themselves “are not consciously based on specific places,” she writes. “For me they are intimate explorations of map language and imagined landscapes.” At right: “Development.” More at Designboom; via…
- ‘All Over the Map’ in Sheboygan, Wisconsin
- At the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, from February 15 to May 10, 2009, All Over the Map is one of four exhibitions that are part of the Center’s “Journeys” series. This exhibition “focuses on rare historical…
- Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery: Creative Cartographies
- Creative Cartographies is a group exhibition at the Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery; it runs until January 9, 2009. Influenced by the organization inherent in cartography, the twelve Brooklyn-based artists in BAC Gallery’s latest exhibition, Creative Cartographies, present viewpoints both…
- Josh Dorman: Within Four Miles
- At the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles until January 11, 2009: “”Within Four Miles: The World of Josh Dorman.” The Los Angeles Times on the exhibit: Most of the work in “Within Four Miles: The World of…
- David Adjaye’s Europolis
- David Adjaye’s Europolis is being exhibited in Bolzano for Manifesta 7. “In conceiving Europolis David Adjaye has extracted information from the capital cities of the European Union and condensed it into a single entity. Europolis is not a traditional…
- Belgrade Is the World
- Belgrade Is the World. Webmapper explains: “The artist Slaviša Savić discovered an unusual and an unexpected coincidence between the town plan of Serbian Belgrade and the map of the world. … The world’s continents seem to match the cities…
- Link Roundup: Mid-July Edition
- Facebook app whereyougonnabe? gets an upgrade focusing on integration with other platforms (previously). Diana Eid takes a look at map art, focusing on three artists we’ve seen before: Matthew Cusick, Elisabeth Lecourt and Susan Stockwell (via GeoCarta). On the…
- Flounder Lee
- “Recently, my artwork has involved mapping in one form or fashion and I thought you might enjoy it,” Flounder Lee writes. My work titled Self-Organized Mapping was all about mapping my life. I walked and photographed the yard where I…
- Finn Nygaard Poster
- John Emerson writes about this poster from Finn Nygaard: “Check out this crazy map from this famous Danish poster designer. I’ve no idea what the point is, but I found it pretty compelling.”…
- Spertus Institute Closes Controversial Show
- Imaginary Coordinates, a controversial exhibition that juxtaposed contemporary Israeli and Palestinian art with antique maps of the region, has been closed prematurely by the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, which had been putting on the show as part of Chicago’s…
- Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art
- Opening today at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center and running until August 17: Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art. See also ArtDaily. Announced last year; see previous entry (the description is unchanged; the dates are not)….
- Erik Laffer’s Cartography Series
- At the Amrose Sable Gallery in Albany, New York until May 25, an exhibition of Erik Laffer’s Cartography Series. The Albany Times Union has a review: “[T]he frenetic undercurrents of Laffer’s abstractions seem to strike a chord with our…
- Painting on Maps
- An interesting thread on MapHist about painting on maps — i.e., using a map like a canvas — yielded links to the following artists. Suzanne Howe-Stevens: “Using maps as a background or frame allows her to emphasize the borders that…
- The Wire Maps of Elizabeth Berrien
- Artist Elizabeth Berrien does wire sculpture; some of her creations are maps. “She’d often felt that the intricate, organic lines of our living planet and its features — continents, great river and mountain ranges — would make a glorious…
- Elisabeth Lecourt
- The art of Elisabeth Lecourt includes clothing made from maps. Bloesem writes, “These clothes are made out of maps from Paris, New York, London and other places, of course you can’t wear them, but hanging them as art on…
- Beyond the Compass, Beyond the Square
- Maps: Finding Our Place in the World isn’t the only map exhibition the Walters Art Museum is involved with; Beyond the Compass, Beyond the Square is an art exhibition in Mount Vernon Place that “features contemporary art by 10 emerging…
- Look Now Look All Around
- Dawn Gavin writes in to tell us about an exhibition she’s curating at the Maryland State Art Council’s James Backas Gallery, in conjunction with the Baltimore Festival of Maps: Look Now Look All Around. Inherent within the construction of…
- Map Art Exhibitions: The Map Show, Elise Wagner
- At the Rockland Center for the Arts in West Nyack, New York, until April 8, The Map Show, an exhibition featuring several contemporary artists. The New York Times has a review: The show presents the work of eight artists…
- Connie Brown’s Custom Maps
- The Hartford Courant reports on an interesting business: Connie Brown, working as Redstone Studios, paints one-of-a-kind, custom maps for her clients. Preparing the highly personal maps can take up to a year, and she usually works on three commissions at…
- Jeff Schmuki
- Pattern Recognition is an exhibition of the work of Jeff Schmuki — “featuring sculptural ceramic works and installations that explore the relationship between cartography, documentary, memory and the natural/manmade landscape” — at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at…
- William Kentridge’s Tapestries
- At the Philadelphia Museum of Art until April 6, an exhibition of tapestries by the major South African artist, William Kentridge. The Porter tapestries “stem from a series of drawings in which he conjured shadowy figures from ripped construction…
- V&A: Mapping the Imagination
- At the Victoria and Albert Museum until April 27, Mapping the Imagination “includes maps made to inform or to entertain, maps enhanced by imaginative embellishments, maps that show imaginary places, and works in which artists have adapted map iconography to…
- Mark Webber
- Mark Webber’s art includes city maps built from tyographical fragments, arranged in ways that both shape and label the map. At right, Amsterdam; he’s also done New York and London. Thanks to John Deen for the link….
- Nancy Goodman Lawrence
- The art of Nancy Goodman Lawrence uses the stuff of maps in collages: “Maps are a huge resource for my work, less for their literal representations than the endless possibilities they offer in rendering the geography of the human…
- Landon Mackenzie
- Houbart’s Hope, an exhibition by the Vancouver-based Landon Mackenzie, opens this Thursday at Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery in Montreal. “In Houbart’s Hope Mackenzie combines her interests in landscape, cartography and neuroscience. Although abstract in appearance, vestiges…
- Berrini Exhibition in San Francisco
- New work by Francesca Berrini (see previous entry) is on display at the Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art gallery in San Francisco, SF Station reports: “Part designer, part surrealist cartographer, Portland-based Francesca Berrini creates fantastical geographies from maps that have…
- CSM on the Festival of Maps, Map Art and Books
- A piece in last Friday’s Christian Science Monitor looks at the Festival of Maps through the lens of map art, referencing our friend Nikolas Schiller, the special map art issue of Cartographic Perspectives, the book accompanying the Field Museum exhibition,…
- New Paula Scher Exhibition
- Paula Scher (see previous entry) returns to the Maya Stendhal Gallery in New York with an exhibition of new works. According to the gallery, “Scher expands on her highly acclaimed Maps series to create her most engaging work yet,…
- James Niehues Profile
- The Colorado Springs Gazette profiles ski resort illustrator James Niehues, whom we first encountered in March 2006. “For 20 years, Niehues, 61, has been North America’s preeminent ski resort illustrator — the guy who paints the trail maps for…
- Two Map Art Exhibitions
- An exhibition of Matthew Picton’s art just wrapped up at the Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery in Portland, Oregon. “His cartography transforms the traditional two dimensional mapping system into a multi-layered sculpture of communication, transportation, and rivers,” says the gallery, “thus both…
- Christa Dichgans
- Christa Dichgan’s art requires close scrutiny: her map-based paintings are countries whose outlines are filled with figures, objects and other tiny details to which a thumbnail such as this (of her 2005 work, “Europa,” a mix of oils and…
- Machado’s Maps
- João Machado’s artwork includes map collages “made entirely with vintage maps,” he writes. “The people shown in [my] work are depicted in the maps of the region in which they are from. Sometimes the maps used are contrapuntal to…
- James Turner’s Map of Humanity
- Way back in the early days of this blog, I linked to portions of James Turner’s Map of Humanity, where feelings, beliefs and aspirations are places on an imaginary map. He was kind enough to write back to explain…
- Get Lost
- Get Lost: Artists Map Downtown New York “is a collective portrait of downtown New York. Twenty-one international artists were invited to create a personal view of the city and draw a map of downtown New York, uncovering a territory…
- Relief Map Carpet
- This astonishing relief map carpet, made from foam bars of different heights and colours, is a product of the Dutch design firm Studio Laurens van Wieringen. Via Boing Boing and Very Spatial….
- Molly Holmberg’s Watercolour Maps
- Most trail maps are spare and functional: without context, you might not even know that trees and mountains are involved. But geography graduate student Molly Holmberg has produced a watercolour map of the trails and open spaces of Bangor, Maine…
- A Map Blog Update: GeoWeb, Cartographismes and More
- The GeoWeb 2007 conference, which takes place later this month and deals with “the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS,” has a conference blog. The blog associated with Krygier and Wood’s excellent book, Making Maps (reviewed here),…
- A Map Exhibitions Roundup
- Zoom (June 30 to August 18, Santa Monica, California). A group exhibition of map art at Santa Monica Art Studios’ Arena 1. “Working in the USA, Britain and Australia, all 19 artists in the show employ maps as resource material,…
- Francesca Berrini
- The art of Francesca Berrini, who “transforms vintage maps of places she has longed to visit into fine art maps of entirely new and imagined worlds. She obsessively tears up original vintage maps into tiny pieces, and then reconstitutes…
- London’s Kerning
- London’s Kerning is a map of London done in type — you have to step back from the large (153 cm × 101.5 cm), limited-edition poster to recognize the city. Interesting. Via Kottke; more at Moon River….
- Nikolas Schiller
- Yesterday’s Washington Post had a major piece about Nikolas Schiller, who’s been doing artful things with aerial photography and doing his best to stay under the web’s collective radar. (Sorry.) Excerpts from the Post article: Schiller barely pauses on…
- More Memory Maps
- Jason Kottke is fascinated by memory maps — that is to say, maps drawn entirely from memory. In addition to some sites we’ve seen here before (previous entries below), he presents a couple more for our enjoyment. First, the…
- Scot J. Wittman
- Still another artist who uses maps as raw materials: Scot J. Wittman. He explains how: I made large facial portraits of these explorers by collaging together tonal variations of the maps of the areas they explored. I then constructed…
- Nina Katchadourian
- Nina Katchadourian is another artist who uses the physical material of maps in her work, whether rearranged, dissected or put onto slides. She’s also labelled clumps of moss that look like maps. Via Platial News and Neogeography….
- More Map Art
- The artists Dinesh links to in his MetaFilter post on map art are ones I’ve linked to before, but among the comments are a few examples of maps in art that I hadn’t encountered yet: Heidi Neilson’s map collages;…
- Susan Stockwell
- Susan Stockwell’s art makes frequent use of maps, either as raw material and as the shape of her final product. Examples of the former include dresses made of maps; examples of the latter include a map of India stitched…
- Manhattan, a Poem and Map
- “Manhattan,” by Howard Horowitz, first appeared in the New York Times on August 30, 1997: it was a poem in the shape of Manhattan Island, about Manhattan, with references to various neighbourhoods and landmarks in the appropriate locations. It’s…
- Analogue Art Map
- Analogue Art Map is a group that uses non-digital technology (e.g., pen and paper) to map inherently digital things — MUDs, social networks and so forth. “[T]he group seeks to both record and generate connections between creative individuals and the…
- Matthew Cusick
- An exhibition of Matthew Cusick’s art, which uses collages of old maps, just wrapped up at the Lisa Dent Gallery, but the images are still available online. From the Artkrush review: “Clipped from yellowed atlases and geography textbooks, the…
- Resistant Maps Report
- Régine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art attended the Resistant Maps conference over the weekend, and has a two-part* report here and here. Summary: “It was a small, unaffected and friendly event but it was also one of…
- Resistant Maps
- Geobloggers points to an upcoming conference/exhibition in Genoa, Italy this weekend: Resistant Maps: Artistic Actions in the Interconnected Urban Territory. The representation of territory holds a historical role in the privileges of power. Geographical data has always been in its…
- Flight Patterns
- Aaron Koblin took FAA flight data and made some flashy animations out of the flight paths. Via atlas(t)….
- Kozloff’s Exterior and Interior Cartographies
- The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s art critic points to an exhibition at the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon: “Exterior and Interior Cartographies” by Joyce Kozloff, which, according to the museum, “features drawings, collages, prints, paintings and sculpture. For fifteen years,…
- Burning Man 2006
- Lisa Hoffman’s map of the 2006 Burning Man festival is more colourful than last year’s effort; see her previous burning maps — and much more detailed than the official version (PDF). Via All Points Blog. Update, Aug. 26: Boing…
- Giclées
- A giclée is a high-quality art print made on a special inkjet printer. It’s by no means exclusive to maps, but it’s a term worth remembering. I first learned about it in the context of a MapHist discussion of fakes,…
- Los Angeles Mapped; Jo Mora
- Boing Boing links to Los Angeles Mapped, the online version of an exhibition of historical maps of Los Angeles on display through January 2007 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The maps on display are diverse in both subject…
- Licence Plate Map
- I was at my local map store over the weekend, and of course they had a good selection of map-related tchotchkes — umbrellas, 3D jigsaw puzzles, squeeze-ball globes. In that vein, this map of the U.S. hand-made from state…
- Cartographic Perspectives: Maps and Art
- What is map art? While I’ve posted a few entries on the subject of maps and art, it’s not something I’ve really stopped to think about. An artist’s work or installation incorporates maps. Good enough for me: post it. But…
- Kim Dingle
- Kim Dingle, Maps of the U.S. Drawn from Memory by Las Vegas Teenagers, 1990: Via Kottke….
- Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”
- Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”: “Using information the government has collected on noise levels within London, a map has been plotted of the capital’s most silent spaces. The map intends to reveal a hidden landscape of quiet spaces and shows…
- Sarah Trigg
- The paintings of Sarah Trigg: “Taking inspiration from secondhand surgery textbooks, airport layouts, and fuzzy aerial photos found on the Web, Trigg maps fictive terrains that are part landscape, part bodyscape.” Mixing the map and medicine metaphors is not…
- 1520+ Hometowns
- Tofu’s “1520+ Hometowns” is a collage of all the town names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, cut from road maps: “In March of 2004 I began a map piece cutting out the hometown of each American serviceman and woman…
- Map Tattoos
- On new mapping blog atlas(t), Claire Light has a neat post about map tattoos: Unfortunately, subsequent repeated google searches didn’t turn up any other map tattoos, treasure or otherwise. What they did turn up were: 1) instances of people using…
- Peter Dykhuis, Visual Artist
- Maps, flags and state symbols abound in Peter Dykhuis’s art: “You Are Here” superimposes a map of Halifax on envelopes; “Radar Paintings” uses airport radar images; “World View: The G7 Suite” encloses maps from each country within their respective flags….
- There’s Always Room for San Francisco
- Not exactly a map, but it’s close enough — it’s a city model, right? — and it’s cool: San Francisco in Jell-O (see also)….
- Exhibition Roundup: Fort Worth, Texas; Hannibal, Missouri
- Patterns of Progress, an exhibition of Texas bird’s-eye-view maps — previously covered here — is now running at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas until May 28. More than sixty highly detailed and oversized prints in this special…
- James Niehues’s Ski Resort Maps
- Commercial artist James Niehues is responsible for a large number of panoramic ski resort maps — those bird’s-eye-view illustrations showing all the runs. A lot of them are available on his web site: there are galleries for eastern U.S., western…
- Paula Scher: The Maps
- Paula Scher: The Maps is an exhibition of Scher’s paintings at the Maya Stendhal Gallery in New York; it runs until December 17. From the Gallery’s web site: “This show, consists of a series of twelve large-scale canvases — intricate,…
- Cartography 101 at the Johnsonese
- Opening tomorrow at the Johnsonese Gallery in Chicago, an exhibition of map-based art called Cartography 101. The gallery’s web site has a few examples, but I expect they won’t stay on the front page after the show closes on September…
- Hand-drawn Burning Man Map
- Burning Man 2005 is upon us — or at least it’s upon some of you. Lisa Hoffman’s hand-drawn map (834-KB GIF) of the site is quite literally a work of art. Via Boing Boing….
- Hand Made Maps
- Hand Made Maps is a London-based commercial art studio that specializes in maps; the site is an extensive portfolio of their recent work for various clients. Some really nice stuff there. Thanks to Clare Lyons for the link….
- Never Ending Drawing
- Oskar Karlin: “Every day I document my movements by drawing them on a map. From that, patterns and images appear.” Select “Projects,” then “Never Ending Drawing.” Via Things Magazine….
- Art of the Road
- Roadmap Art of the Road is a Flickr group that shares “scanned images from vintage roadmaps from gas stations, municipalities and the like.” The focus is on the cover art, not the cartography, but it’s still of interest. See previous…
- Guillermo Kuitca
- An exhibition of the art of Guillermo Kuitca at Hauser & Wirth, London: The main gallery space features Everything, 2004, an impressive four-panel painting which interpolates fragments of American road maps. The enigmatic veined surface invites the viewer for closer…
- Poyarkov’s Map of Ukraine
- MetaFilter is one of the best-kept secret sources for map links, and now that Matt has added tag support, they’re all the easier to find: just look for the map and maps tags. Of course, tagging is optional, and some…
- Memory Mapping
- Megan Hurst writes to tell us about her Memory Mapping project: “Memorymapping.com is a site I co-created which invites visitors to draw maps of places they’ve lived based solely on memory. Their maps are then saved in a database and…
- Mapping the Body
- The art of Mary Daniel Hobson involves the use of collages on images of the human body. Many of the collages are of old maps; browse the gallery and see what you can find. As early mapmakers used pen and…
- More Road Maps
- More scans of old maps — the covers only, alas — at a site that looks like it was just getting started — back in 1998 — and stayed there (via Things Magazine)….
- Road Map of the Human Body
- This illustration of the human body as a road map — veins and arteries appear as expressways, for example — seems to be a very, very neat medical illustration exercise (via Kottke and Muxway)….
