in the studio

Via huffpost and Stucky Art, cartographer and artist Jerry Gretzinger has spent the last fifty years (and for the next twenty, plans to continue) sketching and painting a map for a fictional world.  An online version here.  I think it's called Ukrania, but I'm not sure.

hand-drawn maps

An archive and project devoted to collecting people's hand-drawn maps from around the world.  The route to a party in the middle of the mountains, a daily commute, the seemingly ordinary  instructional scribble,  more deliberated ingenuity, an eventful hike to Macchu Picchu, the high road to Taos, how to get to the ruins of Noisy Castle. Tulsa.

Known as The Hand Drawn Map Association, projects culminated in a publication, From Here To There, an exhibit at Arcadia University titled Nowhere, as well as other curated collections.  They are no longer accepting submissions, but seeking a permanent home for these wonderful maps from everywhere and everyone.

wanderlust

Los Angeles Public Library receives tens of thousands of maps belonging to the late adventurer John Feathers.  Accidentally discovered, this October acquisition makes the library one of the nation's top five map archives.  Mr. Feathers' wide-ranging trove includes "run-of-the-mill" gas station and Chamber of Commerce street maps, as well as "historic gems" from 1592, oddities like a 1918 official paved road guide to the United States, a 1956 Lubbock Texas pictorial map, a 1942 street guide to Los Angeles, and a pre-World War I guide to London and other suburbs, and showing streets, parks, lakes, and rivers.  Photostream here.