I recently came across an article about an artist who makes posters with stylized, abstracted images of street intersections. Artist Peter Gorman got the idea during a cross-country cycling trip, where he encountered a wide variety of intersections in the urban landscape. 

A full view of his posters is available on his Etsy site. Reduced to outlines, these maps look like characters in an alien alphabet, or stick-figures of viruses. Once they are labeled, we can recognize them as intersections, and maybe even identify what streets they represent. There is a lot that these little maps do not tell us. For me, they bring up a lot of questions.

Why would streets come together in those various ways? What geographical features cause roads to zig or zag? What in the built environment might cause a road to dogleg? Do hilly towns have tighter intersections than flat ones? How do the abstracted intersections above compare with the idealized plan of Philadelphia from 1752? `

Do maps always tell us the truth? What do they omit? Can a diagram like Gorman's help us understand a place? I'm imagining he made his drawings based on paper maps, or a digital tool like google maps. What would a map like if it were drawn from personal experience? How about from memory? Ever since seeing Gorman's poster online, questions about maps, and the stories they tell, have been on my mind. I am excited about exploring this topic more as I prepare for our week-long course at UArts, The City as Primary Source.  Art/Music Social Studies/History UArts   bestof