The aesthetic of this was inspired by my childhood memories of Seattle as this simultaneously grungy and vibrant city. I hand-carved linoleum blocks and block-printed with black ink on a selection of textured papers; it was essential that my hand was visible in the piece. I cut and arranged different assortments of buildings and layered them below a silhouette of Seattle, deliberately positioning iconic downtown buildings such as Smith Tower and Rainier Square downtown and keeping clusters of houses closer to the suburbs. Embroidery added texture and stability, as well as a visual connection to the data points of the buttons. Here, red buttons represent where film development stores used to be, green for piano stores, yellow for record stores, and blue for typewriter stores.

San Francisco’s location on the coast became the deciding factor for the aesthetic of this map, alongside my associations of the city as full of hidden treasures and rich histories, winding staircases and discovery. Thus: seafaring maps. I love the beautiful and communicative borders of ancient seafaring maps and the information often embedded from the map into the border itself. I illustrated four sets of stickers as the data points, and then hand-cut and applied them to my pen and ink drawing of the city on plywood. I was especially interested in achieving a layered look through the sticker application, similar to the layering of posters on telephone poles, an example of information which begins to over-communicate and render itself unreadable.

The keywords I chose as parameters for the Portland map were: distinctive, forefront, interconnected. The interconnectedness is key, because during my time in Portland I have been witness to so many incredible communities, to so many networks of supportive people engaged in an ecosystem of care and advocacy, that it feels like a broad and deep mass of roots in constant communication with each other and impossible to disconnect. Embroidery best communicated this materiality and the hidden depths below the surface. I worked with a 16x20 inch hoop to create this piece.