There's something quietly profound about a map. It holds place, history, and belonging all at once. This series was born from that idea.
I started with vintage-style road maps of the San Francisco Bay Area, the place we call home. Each map was hand-painted so the streets and roads are lightly hidden beneath the surface. Still there if you look closely, but softened into something more felt than literal. Then I tore them. Layered them. Wove them into the rolling mountain landscapes that surround us here in Northern California.
The result is a mixed media collage that is both of a place and beyond it.
What excites me most about this body of work is where it can go. The maps can be swapped for anywhere. A hometown, a place you left, a city that changed you. That flexibility makes each piece deeply personal, a handmade original artwork rooted in someone's actual story.
Built with painted papers, layered acrylic, and hand stitching that extends onto the mats, these pieces carry the same tactile depth I've been exploring in my mixed media landscape work. Only now, geography is literally woven in.
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