Click for slight enlargement
From collages made with maps, to maps made with paper, some of them anyway. British artist Matthew Picton, who presently lives and works in Oregon, creates map sculptures. His most recent works are made of paper; not just any paper, but texts or sheet music that is significant to each city in some way. A few examples include: Jerusalem created from The New Testament, The Torah, The Armenian Bible and The Koran; Las Vegas in 1972 created from texts from Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (and luminescent paint); Dresden in 1945 using sheet music of the score of “The Ring” by Wagner; and Lower Manhattan created from headlines that accompanied the 2001 World Trade center bombing and DVD covers of the film “Towering Inferno” also book covers of the novel “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, just to name a few.
Picton’s earlier city map sculptures are mostly made from duralar, enamel paint, and pins with several layers depicting streets and roads at the micro level in addition to the city’s evolution over time. Each layer showing a layer of history in the city’s transformation. Beautiful on “multiple levels”: cartographically, artistically, and textually.
You can see more of Matthew Picton’s maps here.
CollabCubed 