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HAND DRAWN MAP ASSOCIATION

Written by Brittany Kleinman: Whether it’s a place you’ve never seen before or a road you travel on every day, maps give a sense of our location and relationship to the things around us. Most of the time, store bought maps represent this association in a purely physical way, never touching upon the individual emotional significance of that place.

However recently, I have been following a site that is taking a different approach to the typical gas station road atlas, by collecting diagrams that map personal connection to place. The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an ongoing archive of user submitted maps and other interesting diagrams all created by hand. Founder Kris Harzinski has created a public forum where maps can be browsed, uploaded and exhibited on their site and in special shows. Click Read More for additional information.

As a new feature at HDMA, they are inviting various individuals to curate a collection of 10 things. The current exhibition is from John Hutchison who has mapped his personal relationship with the greater USA based upon everything from where his family lives to where he has seen Star Wars. Below he touches upon the magic of maps in his life:

“There is an amazing power in maps. There is also an amazing authority that comes with that power. maps are serious business. Their power to transit information ensures they are virtually always considered reference materials.

I fell under the spell of maps from an early age. I count road trips as one of my most favorite activities in the world. My interest in maps, or rather map making as a mechanism to tell stories, or convey ideas is to turn the traditional notion of maps as authority slightly askew. What if maps didn’t convey information that was of any use to most people? What if maps were used to transmit information about someone’s life, as a biography if you will? What if that biography was just some average jack ass like me? Would the fact they were maps make it somehow more interesting?

This will be a regular feature on the HDMA, with a new collection of 10 things every two months.