Mapping It Out

Many of us are seeing the world around us—either the confines of our homes or the neighborhoods we walk through—with new eyes. We’re reevaluating the relationship we have with the outdoor and indoor spaces we oftentimes take for granted, or fall into the background of our daily lives. While maps are typically used to locate one’s self both locally and globally, they also make for great material for artists looking to manipulate their cartographical designs and to reckon with the social and political histories that have shaped these documents. Some of the sketchbooks in this feature take the notion of ‘maps as material’ literally, while others use the blank pages of the sketchbook to locate the artist within a particular sociocultural context. We hope that, by the time you’re done flipping through each one, your own notion of what it means to belong, how we define the nebulous spaces of ‘home’ and ‘community’, takes a creative turn into uncharted waters.

For her 2018 sketchbook, “Where have all the children gone?”, Claire Starkweather Forrest reflects on the gentrification of her native San Francisco. Through poignant illustrations of animal characters moving out, coupled with intricate portraits of iconic Bay Area architecture, Forrest reckons with the challenges of a changing socioeconomic landscape, and how it impacts the daily markers and structures that help us call our neighborhoods ‘home.’ In her description of the book, Forrest writes, “I found myself asking if it was even possible to raise a family in a city like San Francisco anymore...Are cities like San Francisco now reserved for the young or the wealthy? If those are the only ones who can afford to live in a city like San Francisco, what does it mean for the future of the city? What does it mean for the American family? How does that change the quilt of a city like San Francisco when you change it's threading?” Citing San Francisco Chronicle’s project to map out the families of the Mission and a 2017 article in The New York Times about communities of color getting pushed out by Big Tech, Forrest’s book merges geography, the emotionality of home, with the socioeconomic struggles of gentrification and the white-washing of neighborhoods that carry vibrant cultural histories. 

Sian Robertson’s 2013 sketchbook, “Visual Lists From Maps, Atlases And Other Cartographic Sources,” is a wonderful collection of the artist’s personal fascination with the under-appreciated beauty of map-making. Roberson has made a career out of manipulating maps, transforming local and global displays many of us are all-too familiar with, into interesting experiments in color, geometry, and form. By cutting up and dismantling maps of Kansas, London, even the edge of Antarctica, Robertson recontextualizes these spaces, drawing the viewer’s attention to their topographical beauty. Some of the maps Roberston includes are even of countries and borders that no longer exist or are highly contested, such as shifting borders in Poland or a map of Australia that placed Tasmania in the wrong area. If you’re looking for a way to incorporate found geographic materials into your own artwork, Robertson’s book is a great place to start.

“Psychogeographic and topographic maps of home” is an ambitious sketchbook by Chicago-based, teaching artist Candice Latimer. Through a series of overhead drawings of her studio apartment’s floor plan, Latimer attempts to chart out how she, and her pet cat, occupy and relate to the myriad of objects that fill her home. Latimer notes that, “Squeezing and stacking a houseworth of stuff into a studio apartment results in what resembles some interesting geographic formations,” and she couples her illustrations of her apartment in various forms, like a heatmap rendering, with reflections on her state of mind at the time of the drawing’s creation. Latimer’s notion of ‘psychogeographic’ feels particularly apt right now. In a time when many of us have had to spend most of our days within the confines of our homes, there’s been a lot of time to reflect on one’s personal living situation and how these spaces become reflections of our inner selves.

Chilean artist Paula Ceroni incorporates the delicate art of embroidery with the graphic beauty of transit system maps in her 2015 sketchbook, Metro Threads. The recipient of numerous awards and exhibitions of her work, Ceroni has become famous for her characteristic minimalist sewing style that blends soft color stories with geometric punctuations of thread. She writes, “My work is a permanent search for the representation of a subject in a series of pieces of different techniques and media. My artworks always have a conceptual basis and usually create a dialogue with the public, even inviting to physically participate. My intention is that people could connect with themselves through my art." While many of us rely on public transit, not many of us may take a moment to appreciate the beauty of a subway map or bus routes, the way they cross through different neighborhoods, and connect communities from all walks of life through a single line of transit. Don’t see your transit map included? Feel free to recreate your own inspired by Ceroni’s sketchbook.

How do we attempt to document a place that will soon be gone, quite literally wiped off our maps? Educator Yap Kheng Kin attempts to reckon with this geographic loss in his 2012 sketchbook, “Bukit Brown Cemetery.” The 100-year-old cemetery was mostly destroyed by the Singaporean government the same year of the sketchbook’s creation to make way for a highway. Kin’s sketchbook is a collection of poignant watercolor illustrations, so immersive that it is heartbreaking to think that many of the sites he depicts are no longer there. Along with these vignettes of the cemetery’s botanical beauty and quiet reverence, Kin includes information about the space, and it includes a reflection on what cultural histories and legacies may be lost with the cemetery’s partial demolition. A faculty member of Singapore’s School of the Arts with a background in architecture, Yap continues to also work as a visual artist, exhibiting his work across Singapore.

Kathryn Clark’s 2011 sketchbook, “Neighborhoods lost by foreclosure,” reckons with the ways an American housing crisis intersects with the maps we make to definite our neighborhoods, both from a real estate and community-based perspective. Clark’s ideas for the book first came about after growing disillusioned with working in private urban planning during the waves of foreclosures that came with the Great Recession. Clark’s initial representation of this wide-scale, yet still relatively invisible crisis (due, in part, to the fact that many of these foreclosures happened in isolated suburbs), took the form of a quilt. Her sketchbook was a portable recreation of this project, overlaying translucent, foldable cloth over maps of cities across the United States. As you unfold each page, revealing each layer of red that marks a foreclosed home, the sense of scale begins to resonate with you. Clark’s book is a great example of how maps can be used to wrestle with socioeconomic and political issues. 

Ad designer Dennis Field turned his illustrative eye to the architectural beauty of Windsor in his 2014 sketchbook, “Atlas of the city of Windsor.” An ode to his home for 9 years, Field uses his talent for fine, detailed pen drawings to capture the everyday beauty of this site that, while urbanized in many ways, still bears the hallmarks of centuries-long British history. Each page captures the gorgeous brick castle buildings and cobblestone streets with pops of color to highlight these architectural marvels. A mounted security camera clashes with the facade of an old fort. This is a kind of place-making that negotiates the overlapping histories at play within Windsor, showing how humans have worked with and manipulated the landscape’s natural geography through moving and building.