maps of dallas

The Map as Art opens tomorrow at the Christopher Henry Gallery in New York City. This is a group show curated by Christopher Henry and Katharine Harmon, author of the really great map book "You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination." The show shares its name and accompanies the launch of Harmon's new book. There is an opening reception tomorrow (November 5th) from 6-9 PM.

The gallery is "conveniently located off the Elizabeth Street ramp of the Lower Manhattan Expressway" as illustrated below. Those of you in NYC might actually get the joke.


I did not get any images from the show other than what's on the gallery's site. Below is "Strike Anywhere" by Doug Beube.


Many artists are featured including Joyce Kozloff and Karey Kessler.

Here's a quote from the press release. I'm not sure how much I agree with it but it's an interesting take on mapping.

"In the guise of offering illumination, maps obscure. They purport to bring order to the fundamental chaos of life, promising clarity in the face of flux, and claiming knowledge of the unknowable. In their quest to demarcate our differences, they comfort us even as they give the lie to the notion of common experience."

Driving through Philadelphia the other day we saw some pretty cool murals. I remembered that I had some info about the Mural Arts Program but had not been able to locate a comprehensive map. There are tour maps of the Center City Area but nothing showing the outer 'hoods. Upon further review I found muralBase created by the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Lab. You can choose a theme, artist, zip code or year and get a map showing the location of murals as well as descriptions and pictures about each one. Below is the map that results when you choose "Latino" as the theme - clustered in the Latino sections of town. On the right side is a mural of El Yunque - the rain forest in Puerto Rico.












Here's a nice one - Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Projection!

For those of you like me who were foolish enough to miss the Chicago Festival of Maps, life has given you a second chance.
The Baltimore Festival of Maps begins Sunday with the opening of Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. This is the same exhibit that appeared at the Field Museum in Chicago, now making an east coast appearance at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The Walters chose the London Glove map to represent their various mapping exhibits (there are several other exhibits and events going on at the museum).

As a fan of maps made by non-professionals, I'm really looking forward to seeing the Maps on Purpose exhibit. Art on Purpose, a community arts organization led various neighborhood map making workshops. Below are a couple of samples. Unfortunately the resolution on them is pretty coarse.













Of course I was curious to see where these neighborhoods are so I located them on yahoo maps. I used yahoo because I'm partial to their "micro-neighborhoods" even though they're often wrong. The map on the left is in Sandtown-Winchester, in the top right (NW) part of the map. The map on the right shows the Hollis Market-Union Square neighborhoods at the southern edge of the map.
One thing I have not found on the festival site is a map locating the events. Maybe someone (her majesty?) knows something I don't. I took the map below from yahoo and outlined in purple the area of the neighborhood map above and marked the Walters in a red asterisk. Now you know where to go and what to do. See you there?