Art by Ingrid Dabringer - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. I have always loved maps. I have lived in so many places and I have moved around so much that I think there is a way where a map makes you feel like you can own a place. [text image: "Ingrid Dabringer has a remarkable ability to illustrate striking characters within the geometrical world of maps."] I have completely taken off the top half of the U.K., and then I wanted more of a head, so I took the, there is this inset map of London, and I just kind of went across the ocean and followed some London road lines. So, I will take whatever line is on the paper, and if there is not one, I will create one. It was a fun story to work on. One of my favorite parts about Atlantis was, just thinking about all these men, who had sailed the seas, and how much they like missed women. I was just thinking about how many dead people were at the bottom of the Atlantic. And, you know, there are some young boys who probably have never experienced a woman, and never did in the end, because they ended up dying or going down in a ship in some ocean somewhere. And so, in some ways, I felt like this was an 'ode to men', and their leaving home and traveling. So, I had fun thinking about the history of traveling with this one. In the Kublai Khan, I just felt like he was just so strong and maniacal and, I do not know, passionate, and a bit arrogant, but also a little bit playful. So, I enjoy that there was a correspondence here and really the fun part in creating it was sort of giving myself the license to just sort of fill in, just blacken. Maps are these incredibly personal items, but they are also just very clinical tools, and yet we as humans, we pour our souls into places and we belong to places. We belong to people, but we, to say, "Yeah, I am from Boston", and someone can nod and go, "Yeah, I have been to Boston", and all of a sudden, there is this shared experience. But, what is it? You know, because everybody's experience is so personal, so I feel like these maps are vessels of hopes and wishes and regrets.
