Art

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 for planned communities as much as aerial views of fictional…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at 8:13 AM
Categories: Art
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 means of enticing the reader (and indeed the purchaser, as…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, May 25, 2009 at 6:28 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, May 15, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Categories: Art
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 giclée posters range from $40 to $180, but it’s free…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 6:20 PM
Categories: Art, Blogs, Imaginary Places
‘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 it down himself to protest the recent collapse of the…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Art
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. Previously: Photocartographies: Call for Submissions….   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 Gill’s map spawn a clearly identifiable genre that was to…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 4:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, London
‘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.)…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 6:20 PM
Categories: Art, Fun, Google Earth
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, photographic paper, paint, and pushpins — are striking. At more…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, March 27, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 father often traveled, and an invented conglomeration, mutation, and fragmentation…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 8:29 AM
Categories: Art
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 of transparent paint on wood panels. They are each named…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, March 9, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Categories: Art
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 be of maps or other kinds of compressed or abstracted…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 10:08 AM
Categories: Art
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” (pictured at right; see listings at Brute Force, Etsy and…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 1:08 PM
Categories: Art
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, of Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher. Via MapHist….   Read more →
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Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 8:04 AM
Categories: Art
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, for example, Madagascar snuggled up against Ellesmere Island. The shapes…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, February 13, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Categories: Art
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 well as new ones. … Inspired by his study of…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 9:38 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 map on Rachel Hunter (NSFW) in 2003. Via James Fee….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 9:27 AM
Categories: Art
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 environments, and the relationship between space and place. … Appropriate…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 11:09 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 landscapes that mimic both aerial views and microscopic images. ……   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 3:10 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
Hand Drawn Map Association Book and Contest
The Hand Drawn Map Association is (a) in conjunction with Princeton Architectural Press, publishing a collection of hand-drawn maps, and (b) is running a contest, in part to solicit submissions for said book. The contest runs until the end of April, with monthly winners along with a grand prize…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 7:05 PM
Categories: Art, Books
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, tomorrow. Anyway, snippets from the press release (on both pages):…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 12:29 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 can call the piece successful, now. Via GeoCarta. Previously: David…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, January 26, 2009 at 8:40 AM
Categories: Art
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 carry inside of you, such as the lungs and sacrum,…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, January 26, 2009 at 8:33 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 look at the piece, how various countries are depicted (what…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 8:40 PM
Categories: Art, Video
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 an exhibition running until February 8: The Map: Navigating the…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 1:20 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 for strike) in red, a reference to its frequent industrial…   Read more →
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Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Categories: Art
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 her paintings are the familiar cities that comprise the megalopolis…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, January 9, 2009 at 12:59 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 MetaFilter….   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 6:02 PM
Categories: Art
‘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 maps from prestigious collections, including the American Geographical Society Library…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, December 26, 2008 at 9:36 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 personal and political, mapping their own thoughts, journeys, and observations….   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 8:36 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 Josh Dorman” is based on old topographical maps that the…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 7:59 AM
Categories: Art
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 city but the idea of the city as phenomenon. Its…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, September 1, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Categories: Art, Cities
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 populated areas. Just as the Atlantic Ocean separates the Old…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 6:23 PM
Categories: Art, 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 Google Earth Blog, Frank has a roundup of innovative computer…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 8:43 AM
Categories: Art, Blogs, Copyright, Facebook, Geolocation Services, Geotagging, Google Earth, Map Projections, Triangulations (Links), Video
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 grew up (big yard on a farm); it ended up…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 at 7:20 AM
Categories: Art
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.”…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 9:49 AM
Categories: Art
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 Festival of Maps. It had originally been scheduled through September,…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 3:37 PM
Categories: Art, Censorship, Security & Privacy, Chicago Festival of Maps
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)….   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 11:01 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 primitive nature, connecting with humankind’s eternal sense of searching. Paintings…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 5:39 PM
Categories: Art
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 exist between water and land. Those spaces that we love…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 8:27 PM
Categories: Art
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 translation into wire.” Via Cartophilia and You Are Here, Hon….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 8:18 PM
Categories: Art
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 your wall would be great, wouldn’t it!” Via La Cartoteca….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Categories: Art
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 MICA artists that is interactive, explores new and abstract ways…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 12:07 PM
Categories: Art, Baltimore Festival of Maps
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 a map are the illusions of both stasis and veracity….   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 12:09 PM
Categories: Art, Baltimore Festival of Maps
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 who make maps of one kind or another. Some use…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
Hand Drawn Map Association
The Hand Drawn Map Association “is an ongoing archive of maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand. Whenever you draw a map explaining how to get somewhere or find a map or other hand drawn diagram laying around somewhere, please consider sending it to us for our archive….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 7:34 PM
Categories: Art
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 any one time — one of which was for Vice…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 10:35 AM
Categories: Art
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 De Pauw University from January 30 to March 2, 2008….   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 paper and collaged them onto the web-like background of nineteenth-century…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 2:28 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 express their ideas and experiences of place.” Not much more…   Read more →
Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 7:14 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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….   Read more →
Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 at 7:34 PM
Categories: Art
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 body and the space it occupies. Mountains, oceans and roads…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 at 7:26 PM
Categories: Art
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 of historical maps and the process of cartography remain. Using…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 3:39 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 been cut apart and re-arranged. This comes as a more…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 11:03 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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, and a book drawing on the Library of Congress’s map…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 at 7:34 PM
Categories: Art, Chicago Festival of Maps
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, depicting entire continents, countries and cities from all over the…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 5:55 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 almost every mountain from Whistler in Canada to Portillo in…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, November 4, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Categories: Art, Topo Maps & Trails
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 depicting and abstracting the systems of the city.” The Oregonian…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 12:14 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 paper collage on canvas) can scarcely do justice. Via Strange…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 7:29 PM
Categories: Art
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 the image depicted.” João’s site is flash-based; click on “Works…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 8:42 PM
Categories: Art
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 his purpose in creating the map, and mentioned that he…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 9:12 PM
Categories: Art
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 that is both real and imaginary.” At right: Old New…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 9:01 PM
Categories: Art, New York
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….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 7:08 PM
Categories: Art
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 for the Bangor Land Trust, the Bangor Daily News reports….   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 1:55 PM
Categories: Art, Topo Maps & Trails
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), has moved to a new address. Other new blogs: Cartographismes,…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Categories: Art, Blogs, Conferences, GIS, Online Maps
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, not as an exploration of actual geography or the time/space…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 4:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Exhibitions
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 them, using a painterly process, into new maps and directional…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:47 PM
Categories: Art
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….   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 8:14 PM
Categories: Art, London
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 the way to his computer, which he fires up to…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 3:11 PM
Categories: Art, Satellite & Aerial
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 From Memory group on Flickr, which solicits maps and diagrams…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 8:38 PM
Categories: Art, Education
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 images of important skulls (e.g. Homo habilis) by using maps…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 1:51 PM
Categories: Art
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….   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 5:37 PM
Categories: Art
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; Tim McMichael’s work involving pieces of maps suspended in shellac;…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007 at 9:30 AM
Categories: Art
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 from tea bags, or a “mad cow” map of Britain…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 5:43 PM
Categories: Art
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 now available as a poster. Via MapHist….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 2:08 PM
Categories: Art, New York
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 spaces in which they live,” writes Marcus Helm. “Analogue Art…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 at 7:37 AM
Categories: Art
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 pieces gather together aging blues, whites, pinks, and golds of…   Read more →
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Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 9:43 AM
Categories: Art
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 the most stimulating and thought-provoking conferences I’ve attended this year.”…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 2:26 PM
Categories: Art, Conferences, Exhibitions
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 hands. The regaining of this representation goes through description and…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 9:11 PM
Categories: Art, Conferences, Exhibitions
Flight Patterns
Aaron Koblin took FAA flight data and made some flashy animations out of the flight paths. Via atlas(t)….   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 7:29 PM
Categories: Art, Aviation, Video
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, Kozloff’s art has centered on cartography, blending mutations raising geopolitical…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, October 8, 2006 at 2:32 PM
Categories: Art
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 Boing hosts another detailed map (3.4-MB PDF) and a number…   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 at 5:07 AM
Categories: Art
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, forgeries and facsimiles, particularly in reference to an eBay auction…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 at 9:54 PM
Categories: Art, Collecting
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 matter and style: from a railroad system map to a…   Read more →
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Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 at 7:43 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Exhibitions, Los Angeles
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 licence plates sold at Uncommon Goods takes it to an…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 8:28 AM
Categories: Art
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 what else is included? Do we include, for example, the…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 at 11:32 AM
Categories: Art, Scholarly Journals
Kim Dingle
Kim Dingle, Maps of the U.S. Drawn from Memory by Las Vegas Teenagers, 1990: Via Kottke….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, July 7, 2006 at 6:33 PM
Categories: Art
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 an alternate side of the city that would normally go…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 8:26 AM
Categories: Art, London
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 accidental: Her “Metastatic Explorer” series began with a map of…   Read more →
Posted on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 at 2:00 PM
Categories: Art
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 killed in Iraq. … In some cases the towns were…   Read more →
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Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 2:38 PM
Categories: Art, Iraq War
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 map tattoos as plot furtherers in movies and prose fiction…   Read more →
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Posted on Monday, May 1, 2006 at 8:05 AM
Categories: Art
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. Dykhuis wrote to say this about his site: “This site…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 at 12:57 PM
Categories: Art
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)….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, April 6, 2006 at 7:59 AM
Categories: Art, San Francisco
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 exhibition will offer a chronicle of one of the greatest…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, March 6, 2006 at 3:26 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Cities, Exhibitions
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 U.S. and international resorts, as well as regional views and…   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, March 2, 2006 at 9:00 PM
Categories: Art, Topo Maps & Trails
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, colorful and obsessively detailed maps of different regions of the…   Read more →
Posted on Friday, November 18, 2005 at 1:28 PM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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 24….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, August 26, 2005 at 8:52 AM
Categories: Art, Exhibitions
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….   Read more →
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Posted on Monday, August 22, 2005 at 9:12 PM
Categories: Art
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….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 10:59 PM
Categories: Art
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….   Read more →
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Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 11:19 AM
Categories: Art, Tracerouting
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 entries: Early Highway Maps; More Road Maps. Via Things Magazine….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 8:58 AM
Categories: Art, Groups & Societies, Roads
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 inspection where one can identify the names of locations; painstakingly…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 at 10:40 AM
Categories: Art
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 map-related posts slip through the map/maps net — like this…   Read more →
Posted on Monday, February 21, 2005 at 9:56 AM
Categories: Art
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 re-displayed — categorized by country, county and city.” Backing up…   Read more →
Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 at 9:49 AM
Categories: Art
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 ink to chart the surface of the world, I use…   Read more →
Posted on Sunday, October 3, 2004 at 11:58 AM
Categories: Art
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)….   Read more →
Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 at 9:26 AM
Categories: Art, Roads
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)….   Read more →
Posted on Friday, March 19, 2004 at 2:31 PM
Categories: Art
Hand-drawn Maps
This is fascinating: a collection of hand-drawn maps — the sort that people giving someone directions scribble down on a scrap of paper or napkin. i collect personal maps people draw. one’s memory and perception of a place is very personal, so each is a reflection, however small or large,…   Read more →
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Posted on Thursday, March 4, 2004 at 8:44 AM
Categories: Art

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.