When Is a Drawing a Map?

When I’m drawing a map—especially the Bi-Weekly maps I create for my Patreons—I often ask myself: is this just a drawing or is it a map? Of course, I know there are plenty of ways to construe a map. It doesn’t just have to be roads, or a way to get somewhere, or even followable. But I often struggle with the differentiations we make from one to the other.

Drawing/Mapping the Small

For a long time, I’ve been interested in mapping the minute. Not the “minute” as in a minute-hand on a watch but the miNUTE as in the very small. We are so often taking the gigantic, like a country, and mapping key points across vast areas. We want the highlights. I get tired of maps that tell me all about the largest, most physically substantial attraction in an area. This is why I end up mapping interesting cacti, a family’s memories, endangered plants and the movements of my neighbor’s numerous lifestyle-brand vehicles. I want to know what else is out there that is just as interesting but maybe a little less obviously grand.

I’ve mapped various plants and debris in my yard—an early attempt at logging the fluctuations of natural growth in an urban landscape. But it’s still so broad, that I wanted to go smaller. So, what about a corner of my yard or a corner of that corner? What about a 12-inch square in my yard? What about a 1-inch square? Or what if I take a sample of that soil and look at it under a microscope to map what I see? As I set out to draw these things, I ask myself: how is this a map of the minute and not just a drawing?

A Map is a Drawing But Is a Drawing a Map?

A friend of mine posted on her blog recently about drawing a 12-inch circle of the soil in her yard. I thought YES, she’s done it! That’s what I want to do, too. But then I wondered, isn’t this a map of her yard, captured from just that moment in time, showing us where things are in relation to other things? Or is it a drawing, as she claims it to be? All drawings created to be representations of something show relationships between one item or subject to another. A map does this, too. It shows us that this thing is adjacent or to the left or west or above. It’s higher, faster, hotter or more populous. It’s urban or bucolic, chaotic or serene.

We could probably all agree that, if drawn and not rendered by a GIS program, a map is a drawing. But just because A=B, B doesn’t necessarily equal A. Or does it? If someone drew a portrait of you, would you consider it a map of your face? Or would it just be your face? Would it just be a nice drawing? If I’m rendering something in great detail in order for you to understand it better, aren’t I mapping out the details of that thing? Is a map a map just because I say it is or if someone sees it that way?

A Map is a Map if I Call it a Map

We call all kinds of things maps and we map all kinds of things. I often hear people looking at a piece of art or even a piece of writing and saying “It’s like it’s a map of ___” But maybe it’s like it’s a map of something because through their perception it IS a map. We could be using it to understand the subject (of the artwork) better. Or it could be helping us navigate a difficult subject that is hard to put into words. If it helps me make sense of something that was previously non-sensical, then it has done precisely what many intentional maps set out to do.

A drawing organizes sensory information in the same way that a map organizes whatever information it is sharing. A drawing could be perceived as a map by someone without it ever having intended to do so. Even if the artist was adamant that their creation was just their observations from a moment in time, they can’t keep the viewer from responding to the piece as a map. We can’t control our artistic intention once the piece is out there in the world.

With all the variables of perception, intention, emotions, taste, education and experience, we can’t definitively say something IS a thing and not another thing. What I have to do is just to continue on faith that my intention is true and I’m not trying to trick anyone into believing that what I’ve made is something that they don’t think it is. After all, I only started on this path of mapmaking after a colleague saw something in my work that I didn’t see. If I were to draw a map of that path, it would be very wiggly and full of numerous dead ends, but the path to now would appear very clear. It certainly didn’t feel that way.