September 19 2005

Text By Catherine Jamieson

I bought Ruth Hamilton's A Map Of The World because it had the word "map" in the title. I have maps stuck to the walls in every room in my house, it seems, and some days the last thing I do is add a mountain range or a river to a map I am making. I love maps; they are the realities we can count upon, oceans don't move and continents don't shift, where you trace your finger this morning will be the same this evening.

Here we see a strange and compelling reversal of scale. So used to seeing maps in dimensions where a flat palm can cover Africa, it's ironically strange to see a foot smaller than Lake Superior. It's a "walkable world map" and brings about many possibilities in my mind: not the least of which is one very fun game of Risk.