Art – Page 12 – The Map Room

A Map of Canada’s Roads and Highways

Published on 30 September 201630 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

This striking high-resolution map of Canada’s roads and highways, produced by EarthArtAustralia, is a work of GIS: it’s assembled from Canadian GIS road data, with roads coloured and weighted by importance (freeways are bright yellow, back roads are blue). This map is also inarguably a work of art: I could easily have one on my wall. It’s certainly being sold as such, with high-resolution digital downloads and prints available. (EarthArtAustralia has a number of downloadable and frameable maps based on road and waterway data: they’ve been coming at a furious clip lately.)

Quail Lane Press’s Letterpress Maps

Published on 17 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Quail Lane Press is a husband-and-wife Oregon studio that makes, among other things, very nice looking letterpress prints of hand-drawn maps. Etsy store. [Mike Hall]

Architectural Maps of London

Published on 8 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

London-based publisher Blue Crow Media has begun issuing a series of cartographic guides to urban architecture. They sent me samples of their first two maps, the Art Deco London Map and the Brutalist London Map. (A bilingual Constructivist Moscow Map came out this week, and a Brutalist Washington Map is coming in October.)

Each is a folded paper map of London, 42 × 60 cm in size, that highlights more than 50 examples of Art Deco or Brutalist architecture, respectively, found in that city. On the front side is the map itself, where the architectural examples, highlighted in red, pop out against an extremely spare base layer that has no text except for parks and Tube stations; streets are unlabelled. The end result is dramatic and clear—the grey-on-black Art Deco map is particularly striking—but presupposes a familiarity with the landscape (or a smartphone); these maps really can’t be used on their own to find things. They’d look awfully good on a wall, though. These are simple, well-designed maps that make a virtue of simplicity. They cost £8 each (or two for £14.50).

Interchange Choreography

Published on 26 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Interchange Choreography is a collection of maps of complicated highway interchanges by Chicago-based designer Nicholas Rougeux. “Applying colors to roads and using connecting roads to blend those colors adds structure and breathes new life in to areas that are often avoided for their complexity. The results resemble everything from dancers to otherworldly creatures.”

New Jersey’s interchanges look particularly complicated:

Prints are also available. More at Slate and Fast Company. [Leventhal Map Center]

The Illustrated Map of London

Published on 11 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Illustrator Cally Lathey has produced a second edition (I hadn’t seen the first edition before now) of her Illustrated Map of London. This extraordinarily detailed and whimsical hand-drawn map is the result of five months’ effort; this short video chronicles the process.

It’s available as a limited edition print in two sizes, prices ranging from £110 to £140. Maps of central, north, west, southwest, southeast and east London are also available. More about the map at Londonist and Time Out London. [WMS]

Wonderground Map Calendar

Published on 8 August 20168 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Here’s a coincidence for you. On Saturday, the day after I posted about an exhibition of MacDonald Gill’s pictorial maps, I discovered, while shopping at a local stationery store, that there was such a thing as a MacDonald Gill Wonderground Map of London calendar. (It’s also available on Amazon.)

Previously: MacDonald Gill Exhibition in San Diego; MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map.

MacDonald Gill Exhibition in San Diego

Published on 5 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

gill-wonderland

Art Meet Maps: The World of MacDonald Gill is an exhibition of nine of MacDonald Gill’s pictorial maps at the Map and Atlas Museum of La Jolla in La Jolla, San Diego, California. The exhibition also includes pictorial map art by Dolodes d’Ambly, Lucien Boucher, Jo Mora and Ruth Taylor White. Admission is free, but the museum is only open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, as well as the first and third Saturdays of each month. It runs until 20 May 2017. Coverage from the La Jolla Light. [WMS]

Previously: MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map.

A Forthcoming Map Art Book About New York City

Published on 22 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Yesterday on her Facebook page, Katharine Harmon announced her next map art book: You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City is coming in November from Princeton Architectural Press. “It features 150 cartographic views of New York (which has to be the most-mapped city in the world)—including historical maps, cartoons, contemporary art, pictorial maps, hand-drawn maps, and more,” Harmon writes. Based on her previous books, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (2004) and The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography (2009), both of which I own, this will almost certainly be a book worth looking for. Pre-order at Amazon.

New Book: Making Art from Maps

Published on 22 July 201622 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Jill K. Berry’s latest book, Making Art From Maps: Inspiration, Techniques, and an International Gallery of Artists, is out this month from Rockport Publishers. From the publisher: “With her cartographic connections, she takes you on a gallery tour, introducing you to the work of some of the most exciting artists creating with maps today. Designer interviews are accompanied by 25 accessible how-to projects of her own design that teach many of the techniques used by the gallery artists.”

(I reviewed Berry’s first book, Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking, back in 2011.)

Amazon (Kindle) / iBooks

The Great British Colouring Map

Published on 18 July 201618 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Another map colouring book has just been announced, this one from the Ordnance Survey: “The book will take you on an immersive colouring-in journey around Great Britain, from the coasts and forests to our towns and countryside. Expect to see iconic cities, recognisable tourist spots and historical locations across England, Scotland and Wales via the 55 illustrations. The Great British Colouring Map also includes a stunning gatefold of London. We can’t wait to share it with you—it will be on shelves in October.” Pre-order at Amazon.

Previously: A-Z Maps Colouring Book; Albion’s Glorious Ile: A 400-Year-Old Map Colouring Book; City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book.

Nick Ross Helps Out

Published on 6 July 20166 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

On Canada Day, Nick Ross drew a map of Canada to help Americans out:

I drew a map of Canada to help Americans out. HAPPY CANADA DAY pic.twitter.com/nyPHDEr3jx

— Nick Ross (@NickBossRoss) July 1, 2016

On the Fourth of July, Nick Ross drew a map of the U.S. to help Canadians out:

I drew a map of America to help Canadians out. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! pic.twitter.com/1l5M6Rq9QR

— Nick Ross (@NickBossRoss) July 4, 2016

Jane Hunter’s Textile Map of the EU Referendum

Published on 25 June 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Haud Oan is Scottish artist Jane Hunter’s response to the EU referendum results. It’s a textile map of the results, with threads leading off to Europe from pro-EU Scotland; the English threads have been cut.

Previously: Jane Hunter’s Textile Maps.

A Fantasy Map of North America

Published on 22 June 201622 June 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

The latest map of the real world done in the style of fantasy maps (remember: fantasy maps have a distinct style), at least that I’ve encountered, is this map of North America offered by Etsy seller Aoraki Maps. (They also have one of the southeastern U.S.) The style is very fantasy map, with cursive labels rather than the (older) Didone-style lettering. [Boing Boing]

Previously: Fantasy Maps of U.S. Cities; A Fantasy Map of Ireland; A Fantasy Map of Great Britain; A Fantasy Map of Australia; A Fantasy Map of the U.S.

A-Z Maps Colouring Book

Published on 25 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

There are more map colouring books out there than I realized (I’m going to have to compile a list). For example, A-Z Maps’ Maps: A Colouring Book, which came out last October. From the publisher: “This adult colouring book includes a number of street maps from around Great Britain including London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Manchester, together with some more unusual designs—contour lines around Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon and some fascinating map mandalas (intricate patterns created by repeating sections of mapping around a central point).” Buy at Amazon. [A-Z Maps]

Previously: Albion’s Glorious Ile: A 400-Year-Old Map Colouring Book; City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book.

USGS Topo Maps as Art

Published on 15 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

“For the past number of years, I have been collecting the U.S.G.S.’s maps, treating them as eminently affordable pieces of American art,” writes Tom Vanderbilt in the New York Times Magazine. “The beauty intrinsic to these maps is the byproduct of an entirely different mode of production, the last gasp of an antiquated way of representing the world.” [Gretchen Peterson]