Mapping The Way-Four in Art Project

I feel very privileged to have been accepted into the Four in Art on-line group just this past month. I am taking this membership quite responsibly. 

The theme for this year is Urban and the challenge for this quarter is Urban Maps.

I have done a great deal of thinking about this topic. How shall I quilt about maps in a 12” square space?

I could do a piece showing a city map with streets and work colors in to show types of land use: buildings, neighborhoods, parks, or all of it.

I could do a piece incorporating words found on city maps using stenciling, paints, stitches and such.

Should I show how a city developed by creating a sheer overlay of a present day map that can lift to reveal a dated map from a century ago?

Should I focus on new technology such as GPS mapping, or what about mass transportation maps?

Maybe I could do an abstract representation of a city map using a cut and slash method of quilt making.

Make a color study of a statistical map indicating population, poverty, etc.  

There are so many choices. I must narrow it down to two or three and get working on it, since November 1 will be on me in no time.

In my research, I discovered that from the 14^th Century on, mapmakers used a combination of methods to produce a pictorial city map. They included painting, sketching and engraving. I see the making of an art quilt piece today is similar to what mapmakers have been doing for hundreds of years.

I have learned that a pictorial map was intended as a decorative object and communities felt a sense of importance if one was made for them. Maps were most commonly drawn from the perspective of the cartographer, creating a perspective view rather than an aerial view, which did not allow a person to see all there was in the city. Leonardo da Vinci improved on mapmaking by drawing plans of a city layout and building outlines. These maps moved away from pictorial oblique maps toward outline plans. In the 18^th Century, balloons tethered above London helped cartographers see and record the layout of streets and roads although the wind posed some problems.

A few books I found helpful were:

Understanding Maps of Our World: Maps and Cities, published by Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2010

The Penguin Historical Atlas of North America, by Eric Homberger, 1995, Penguin Books

One Planet Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, published by United Nations Environment Programme, 2005  NOTE: This book is spectacular for the photography. It is an oversized book and very heavy but fascinating.

As I was investigating the topic on the internet, I came across the webpage for Valeria S. Goodwin, who designs cartographic, architectural, and abstract quilts. She written a book Art Quilt Maps: Capture a Sense of Place with Fiber Collage-A Visual Guide that C & T Publishing has just released. It looks like a book I must view!