RESILIENT….NATURE
As 2023 winds up, I wanted to give a shout out to another mapmaker, Anton Thomas of New Zealand, who recently completed a Covid-driven project of amazing breadth and beauty, his WILD WORLD global map. This hand-drawn, view of the planet contains 1642 animal species, all roughly located in their natural areas. It’s a stunning piece of art for many reasons, both for the artistry and the ideas that drove it. In the face of so many global challenges, it serves to remind us
SO WHERE ARE WE?
It’s the 3-year anniversary of the Covid pandemic, when the world shut down and everybody reevaluated their lives and how they lived them. Now things are “mostly back to normal”, but not really. Most of us have survived and we are doing better than we were last year or the year before, but….this is far from normal. Many of us have questioned some of our most basic premises about how to function in the world and what the future holds. This is not stuff to
DRAGGED INTO THE 21st CENTURY, RELUCTANTLY
Although we are 20+ years into the new century, which may seem late for bringing this up, my thoughts turned to the phenomenon of how much has changed since the much-dreaded Y2K Apocalypse which never happened. Remember how the world was going to end and all computers were going to stop working? In was in the shadow of this paranoia that my first maps were created, followed not long afterwards by my first website. And it now looks it! It was a great stride forward,
THE LOSS OF DEXTERITY
The other day I was reading about a piece of work being prepared by Gaetano Pesce, one of the greats of 20th Century Italian design, called “La Perdita della Manualita’” which translates to be “The Loss of Dexterity”. This piece and its title is acknowledging and lamenting the loss of hand craftsmanship in the creation of many things, a skill which relates to many cultures but certainly is near and dear to the hearts of Italians. And, as someone of Italian descent who makes hand-drawn
RENEWAL…..THE COURAGE TO FAIL
New Year, new map, new determination; thoughts of the realistic yet relentlessly upbeat. The latest map is of Newport, Rhode Island, surely one of the most iconic of American cities. Founded as one of the earliest colonies in a vast natural harbor, made prosperous by the whaling industry and finally morphed into a summer playground with amazing “cottages” and yachting’s Americas Cup. This place has seen as many ups and downs as anywhere and each time had the courage to remake itself
PANDEMIC YEAR 2
As we approach the second full Holiday Season of these continue-to-be-challenging times, it's numbingly daunting just what to say. The upbeat news is that “we're still here” (tip of the hat to Sondheim's Follies) and I was able to still do 2 new maps, one, a re-work of Eastern Long Island and two, a brand new one of the Newport area. It was very calming to achieve something satisfying and familiar during such a chaotic period. At a time of such uncertainty and loss, it's
2020 BINGO–THAR SHE BLOWS!
As we thankfully bid farewell to the worst and weirdest year ever, what could be more appropriate than a whale in New York harbor giving an "ahoy" to Lady Liberty? Surely this is a good omen to usher us into a new and better reality. Less than a year ago, who could have imagined what was to come and how we would be left yearning for the most basic freedoms of being able to go outside and be with other people. As many people
BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE
As we continue through the pandemic and economic meltdown of society and its norms this Labor Day 2020, it’s easy to give into despair and think that things have changed for the worse and will never recover. We are all pining for the long ago days of only 6 months ago when everything seemed a lot rosier somehow. What does this have to do with maps, you may ask? Well maps have always been, correctly or not, about providing some assurance in the face of
CORONA MAP
I rarely write blogs about my own specific map productions but I’m so excited about what I’ve been doing during this sheltering-at-home time that I’m making an exception. I took the opportunity to re-visit some older maps that I had done and which I always felt could somehow have turned out better (different is better?) and I started re-working them. The first result is of the Eastern End of Long Island, NY, both the north and south forks, and a place that has