Remember your first treasure map?

LineScape #12 (Fields and Highways) ©2011 Ayn Hanna, 31.5"x40", Textile Painting (cotton fabrics hand-dyed and silk screened by the artist, cotton stitching)

M.A.P.S.  *    M.A.P.S   *    M.A.P.S

Remember those treasure maps from teen adventure stories, oftentimes one of the few visual pages in a paperback full of text?  And board games too, the route laid out in winding colorful blocks, moving a piece along a path, picking up clues along the way?  These are some of my earliest memories of my fascination with Maps, drawn not only to the cool visual elements, but also to the mystic sense of map as representation of some other place, whether real or imagined.

And who hasn’t been mesmerized by the images of mountains, earth, city, and sea below when looking out an airplane window?  Makes the time fly by when sketching those airplane window views in flight.

One of my favorite things to do is review course maps after doing a big cycling event or a triathlon race and reconnect with my memories of different places along the route, reliving the energy and feeling of the moment.  I’ve saved or downloaded the course maps from most of my events.

Maps are creativity in its purest form.  Whether as a visual record of a place, event, memory, or idea, maps exist as a record of the maker’s artistic expression, bringing the unseen idea into visual representation, or recording the memory of an event or place.  And Maps are just plain cool visual images – I love the shapes, colors, and symbols of maps.

My New Series:  LineScapes

During 2010, when I was doing web research to find images of Navy planes while working on the design of the quilts I made for the Navy Quilting Challenge, I stumbled upon some b&w aerial images of abandoned Naval airfields and was struck with how beautiful the compositions were.  These became the initial inspiration for starting my LineScape Series.  In late 2011, I made 9 small textile paintings, each 12″x12″, based on these aerial maps.  You can see the full group of them here.  I imagine I’ll do more.

LineScape #7 ©2011 Ayn Hanna 12"x12" Textile painting (5 layers hand-dyed cotton fabric, cotton stitching)

This series also includes images that are “map-like”, an extension of visual map forms and imagery with an exploration of the use of line (hence the term LineScape for the series), such as this one below:

LineScape #13 (Squiggles) ©2011 Ayn Hanna 20.5"x18.5" Textile Painting (discharged whole cloth black cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton stitching)

And, per my comment above about reviewing course maps from events that I’ve done and reconnecting with “the moment”, this series will include some personal map imagery of events and places that are very special to me, such as the one below (in progress) of one of my favorite local triathlon courses:

Pelican Lakes (in progress) © Ayn Hanna

I’m excited about this new series and the many directions it may evolve.  There’s something very soothing and natural about Maps. I’m very drawn to them as a form on many levels and curious to see where this path, exploring Maps and Lines and Scapes, will lead.

Anyone else have a strong attraction to maps?  What is it that captures your interest?  Please share in the comments below.