Urgent 2nd Class

A couple of years ago I was in Denver looking around a store that sold old maps. The beautiful historical gems of cartography were either carefully framed or otherwise sealed from the elements. Even the oldest maps were amazingly well preserved and appropriately expensive. After ten minutes of quiet ogling, I sidled up to the store owner and sheepishly asked if he had anything damaged and badly aged. He looked at me as though I were asking for a dry crust of bread in a five-star restaurant. I explained that I wasn't a collector but I wanted the material for making artwork (I tend to pump up what's left of my English accent in cases like this because it helps portray me as eccentric rather than lunatic).

This approach can lead to one of two responses: dealers consider my intentions sacrilegious (even though they will probably end up trashing the kind of stuff I want) or they become curious and want to know more about my creative endeavors.

In this particular case the latter variety of conversation ensued, and after a short while the owner descended into his base-ment, rumbled around, and returned with a few small, heavily foxed maps. I glanced through the pile and plucked out a plum: a brown ink map of Egypt from the late 1700s. It was torn and distinctly worse for wear and at one point had been folded so that the left and right sides of the map had ghosted themselves onto their opposite halves. I loved it!

I inquired about price, and the now-affable owner offered it to me at a minute fraction of the cost of its elegant relatives on the walls. I handed him a small bill, thanked him profusely, and departed the establishment as pleased as Punch.

Sadly, good fortune like that doesn't happen often, but it shouldn't stop you from trying. Most of my map art comes down to lesser items found in junk stores and garage sales—things that need a fair bit of work to invigorate.

[ Palm ] I copied this palm onto a French map and then colored it with liquid watercolor.

[ The Isle of Sey ] Look carefully—this is not quite what it seems. Using a large Ordnance Survey map from the 1940s, I tore small sections of the coastline and rebuilt a new, small island out of the pieces. NB: Sey is yes backwards, and the middle of the island has a town called St. Lier.

[ Layover ] Using the spare center section of the Sey map, I made an acetate overlay and placed the coast outline on top of the image of the boat.

[ The 7th Hungarian Goulashers ] The merging of two completely unrelated items can often instigate a very interesting outcome, like the battle plan that has been married to a 1948 menu from the Queen Mary ocean liner. It would seem that the incursion of the coffee has taken on a potentially devastating strategic, military importance . . .
Could I have conceived such a bizarre document from scratch? Not a hope in hell! It had to come from messing around with the hodgepodge of "stuff" that inhabits my studio.

[ The Shropshire Road ] This strip map of an English thoroughfare I bought in Australia. I liked everything about it apart from the heraldic shield, so I superimposed a pressed four-leafed clover.