# Very Expensive Maps > Very Expensive Maps is a podcast in which cartographer Evan Applegate interviews better cartographers: the best living mapmakers on how they make maps in ink, pixels, graphite, thread, paint, ceramic, wood and metal. Host: cartographer Evan Applegate (https://evanapplegate.com/). Contact: veryexpensivemaps at gmail dot com. ## Listen - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/7BpffVG2TkecIwers4FUNb) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-expensive-maps/id1684093361) - [RSS feed](https://anchor.fm/s/dc2c3968/podcast/rss) ## Pages - [Very Expensive Maps](https://veryexpensivemaps.com/): Cartographer Evan Applegate interviews the best living mapmakers about how they make maps in ink, pixels, graphite, thread, paint, ceramic, wood and metal. Episodes 27 to 48. - [Episodes 1 to 26](https://veryexpensivemaps.com/page-2/): Earlier episodes of Very Expensive Maps, the podcast in which cartographer Evan Applegate interviews better cartographers. ## Episodes - Episode 48: Reynold Mackey (https://www.globesculptor.com). Colorado Springs artist and arborist Reynold Mackey on his decade of hand-carving accurate physiographic globes out of solid wood, how to translate a 2D topobathymetric map onto a sphere, art as family business, casting globes in bronze, chainsaw-carving to Hendrix and dental pick-carving to… - Episode 47: Neil Allen (https://www.benchmarkmaps.com/). Oregon lead cartographer and product manager Neil Allen talks atlas production with East View Geospatial’s Benchmark Maps, the years of mapmaking and months of ground-truthing required to create a Texas atlas, adventures in custom cartography (clients include the U.S. - Episode 46: Hap Wilson (https://hapwilson.com/). Ontario explorer, mapmaker, and conservationist Hap Wilson on drawing 400 guide maps across 50 years, traveling more than 40,000 miles of Canadian wilderness by canoe, the one digital tool he likes (it’s Google Earth), saving lives by creating a map that, unlike the one it replaced, did not send… - Episode 45: Erick Ingraham (https://www.erickingraham.com/maps). Colorado painter, illustrator and mapmaker Erick Ingraham on solving art directors’ problems, making it interesting for himself (“I’m known to make things more complicated than they might need to be”), spending eight years painting the Rockies’ western slope, working from his own photographs,… - Episode 44: Stephen Walter (https://stephenwalter.org/). London artist and mapmaker Stephen Walter on two decades of drawing and painting “the semiotic residues of humankind,” an invitation to map an Ivorian national park (and why you should wait for the dry season before attempting this), approaching six years of work on an NYC map, interpreting Michael… - Episode 43: John Tauranac (https://www.johntauranac.com/tauranac_s_line_of_maps_134255.htm). Manhattan writer and cartographer John Tauranac on his first maps of Midtown’s pedestrian passages, a public debate with Massimo Vignelli (“His geography was egregious”), working at a very different MTA (they used to have an aesthetics committee?), the “no improvements” made to the official subway… - Episode 42: Andrew Middleton (https://mapcenter.com/). In early 2023 GIS analyst and cartographer Andrew Middleton saw a tweet about Andy Nosal’s search for someone to take over The Map Center, Nosal’s map shop in Pawtucket, RI; six months later Middleton left California to move into one of the last map retail stores in the U.S. - Episode 41: Lionel Portier (https://lionelportier.com/portfolio/maps-2/). Lyonnais illustrator and designer Lionel Portier on a mapmaking career that spans 30 years and five continents, accepting any map challenge an art director might conceive, a travel magazine gig that led to an Australian passport, painting 100 birds for a wetland park, his favorite territory to… - Episode 40: Isaac Dushku (https://lordofmaps.com). Utah artist Isaac Dushku on how a map has to evoke either a sense of adventure or a sense of home, the best- and worst-selling states in his catalog (he drew all 50), taking his business Lord of Maps from being ghosted on Facebook Marketplace to supporting his family, creating a board book of… - Episode 39: Sam Usle (https://www.studioredcar.com/urban-design). Urbanist and illustrator ⁠Sam Usle⁠ on designing human-scale communities and rendering them in watercolors, why theme parks reflect a yearning for human-scale towns, redesigning part of his high school campus before graduation, why you can thank Le Corbusier for hideous Revit-default cities, the… - Episode 38: Naomi Rosenberg (https://lighthouse-sf.org/tmap/). Naomi Rosenberg, assistant director of the Media and Accessible Design Lab at San Francisco’s LightHouse for the Blind, discusses the art of making fingertip-readable maps: why clutter is the enemy of good tactile maps, the quest for an affordable embosser, being locked to 24 pt. - Episode 37: Matthew Dean Shaffer (https://www.matthewdeanshaffer.com/maps). New Haven architectural designer and artist Matthew Dean Shaffer on balancing accuracy with art, taking a break from straight lines to draw birds, software-driven homogeneity in American architecture (“Straight-out-of-Revit, as we say”), why he draws the vegetation last, how anything’s better for… - Episode 36: Jamshid Kooros (http://www.koorosmaps.com/welcome.html). Arlington “reformed architect” and pictorial cartographer Jamshid Kooros discusses his 30 years of mapmaking based on photographs, sketching and “walking, walking, walking,” the end of the drop-in pitch, turning three-week hikes into maps of French cities and castles, doing his own paper… - Episode 35: David Kulbeth (https://columbuscartography.com). Stafford cartographer and entrepreneur ⁠David Kulbeth ⁠on reviving old map aesthetics with his digital-to-copperplate-to-print-to-watercolor technique, the (costly) difference between copperplate etching and engraving, finding a custom papermaker, keeping his art affordable, finding style… - Episode 34: Sophie Parr (https://mapsbysophie.com). Fish Creek artist and gallery owner Sophie Parr on creating more than one hundred 0.5"-to-the-mile maps using aerial imagery and a 0.2mm-nib pen, why she only accepts 2x2" commissions (while working on her own 2x3 ft. - Episode 33: Lee France (https://leefrance.me). Sandpoint cartographer Lee France discusses making his first topos in Chile, spending months on a single map for National Geographic Trails Illustrated, the challenge of making an attractive interactive map that includes every scale from hilltop to hemisphere, how an up-to-date cadastral layer can… - Episode 32: Gregor Turk (https://gregorturk.com/about/). Atlanta visual artist, sculptor and “topophiliac” Gregor Turk on walking 250 miles of the U.S./Canada border, creating landscapes with clay, wood and recycled inner tubes, turning Landsat imagery into hundreds of hand-painted ceramic tiles, making 1:1 scale maps, chasing phantom streets, fighting… - Episode 31: Tom Patterson (https://shadedrelief.com/). Leesburg cartographer Tom Patterson on his decades creating visitor maps for the National Park Service (there’s a good chance his work is crumpled in your glovebox), learning to draw terrain by corresponding with an artist in Scotland, why he doesn’t lament the passing of 70s-era production… - Episode 30: Melinda Clarke & Deborah Young Monk (https://www.themelbournemap.com.au). St Leonards map producer/founder Melinda Clarke and Melbourne illustrator Deborah Young Monk discuss their collaborations across more than three decades, how to tell an artist they need to redraw three months of work, scouting territory by car, helicopter and hot air balloon, a week spent editing a… - Episode 29: Neil Gower (https://www.neilgower.com/Maps-Map-Art). Lewes/Berlin graphic artist and “exuberant mapmaker” Neil Gower on painting an estate plan when the grounds are unfinished, the work that gives him a “hum in the pelvis,” what Frank Zappa has in common with high-effort fake maps, an abandoned 5x5 ft. - Episode 28: Andrew Lynch (https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2017/05/a-complete-and-geographically-accurate-nyc-subway-track-map/). New York City cartographer and QueensLink chief design officer Andrew Lynch on using library archives, train-mounted GoPro footage and his own two feet to plot every track in the New York City subway system, a brush with cubicle-based urban planning at the Port Authority, testy-yet-productive… - Episode 27: Danielle Currie (https://www.satellitestitches.com). New Brunswick embroidery artist Danielle Currie discusses her fans among NASA’s Ocean Processing Group, spending more than 400 hours to render an Icelandic river in straight stitches, her hoops being mistaken for paintings, how you really have to enjoy the colors of a piece you’ll hold in your lap… - Episode 26: Gabriel Camus (https://www.instagram.com/gabrielcamus.art/). Toronto architect and artist Gabriel Camus discusses the 20" wide, 20 ft. long imagined cityscape he’s been drawing since 2018, a 100 ft. - Episode 25: Simon Polster (https://cartisan.org). Königs Wusterhausen mapmaker Simon Polster discusses falling into his first topo mapping project after hitchhiking from Iran to Berlin, using Soviet topographic maps as a starting point to map Armenian hiking trails, donating data to OpenStreetMap, the eternal method of “play around with it ‘til it… - Episode 24: Kevin Sheehan (https://www.manuscriptmaps.com). East Yorkshire artist-cartographer Kevin Sheehan discusses picking a fight with fellow history PhDs by drawing a 19x29” calfskin portolan chart of the Mediterranean, spending 2 months stippling the lunar surface with a dip pen, acquiring a novel accent after 20 years in England, heated… - Episode 23: Jeff Clark (https://clarkgeomatics.ca). Vancouver “accidental cartographer” Jeff Clark discusses his 100-layer 18-month project to map the Salish Sea bioregion, the importance of testing your waterproof trail map paper, getting a big boost from the local press, the eternal hassle of bathymetric data, consulting North America’s best… - Episode 22: Anthony Despalins (https://www.instagram.com/the_inland_sea). Lisbon cartographer and artist Anthony Despalins on using the visual language of French 1:50k topos to create imagined landscapes, a toolkit of pencils, poems, markers, memories and ink, drawing inspiration from the Gironde estuary and Matthew 6:9, sketching entire layouts in reverse on tracing… - Episode 21: Grant Preller (https://www.instagram.com/bomboramaps/). Margaret River cartographer and surfer Grant Preller on catching waves down the Iberian coast in a 1980 VW bus, spending five years marking promising breaks along 50 miles of Australian coastline (much of it on foot), relating local history with maps, mapping ‘til “the end of [his] days,” and using… - Episode 20: Aaron Taveras (https://www.cartografix.co/). Reno cartographer and outdoorsman Aaron Taveras on why he started making his own trail maps, “taking [his] sweet time” to create a hyper-detailed monochrome 4x5’ map of Nevada landforms, beginning a map with the raster data, an inspiring backcountry ski atlas, teaching cartography by disassembling… - Episode 19: Jake Coolidge (https://jakecoolidgecartography.com). Redwood City cartographer and artist Jake Coolidge on making maps the hard way with ink, graphite, a metal scribe, copper, wax and ferric chloride, the difference between in silico and in vivo cartographic generalization, creating novel projections with two-point perspective, learning to letter… - Episode 18: Dan Coe (https://dancoecarto.com). Olympia cartographer and graphics editor Dan Coe on his journey from Alaska sea kayak guide to geomorphology storyteller, what you learn in an office (and family) full of geologists, getting laid off and traveling the world for a year, how the paths of ancient glaciers shaped his neighborhood, the… - Episode 17: Anton Thomas (https://www.antonthomasart.com/). Nelson artist-cartographer Anton Thomas discusses his travels from Utah to the Himalayas, creating “that mix of serious cartography and serious art,” logging his drawing time with a stopwatch, collecting photo references for 1,500 species, how drawing the little cartouche map-within-a-map can get… - Episode 16: Nat Slaughter (https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~319878~90088984). Cupertino cartographer, designer and artist Nat Slaughter on using hardcore wildlife survey techniques to count squirrels with Jamie Allen, putting sound installations in shipping containers, the two years of shoe-leather data collection that went into his 5x2’ Central Park map, his desire to walk… - Episode 15: Jane Crosen (https://www.mainemapmaker.com/). Penobscot, Maine mapmaker Jane Crosen discusses her 40+ year cartographic career, the sound advice of “when in doubt, leave it out,” creating spoof maps for the nautical market, producing two expanded and rearranged editions of George Colby's 1881 atlases of Downeast Maine counties, becoming “[her]… - Episode 14: Jug Cerović (https://www.jugcerovic.com/#mapping). Madrid architect and mapmaker Jug Cerović discusses the transit cartographer’s ability to shape reality, drawing hundreds of bus lines by hand, mapping first and visiting later, installing guerrilla maps in his hometown of Belgrade, organizing a new map conference, helping Apple create a good… - Episode 13: Jeff Murray (https://jeffmurray.co.uk). Somerset pen-and-ink artist Jeff Murray discusses sketching across the world during his ski bum years, selling his first print off a folding table in New Zealand, drawing in ten-hour chunks, the joy of selling art out of a gazebo, why he works at the continental scale, playing with perspective, his… - Episode 12: Carl Churchill (http://www.churchillgeo.com/). New Jersey cartographer and Wall Street Journal graphics editor Carl Churchill talks his map vocation and EDM avocation, spending two weeks on an elaborate wildflower-detection remote sensing script before an editor (correctly) tossed it, making fantasy maps with GIS tools, what drum loops taught… - Episode 11: Elliot Park (https://www.columbiapressworks.com/). Columbia designer, illustrator and country songwriter Elliot Park on his ten year quest to hydraulically press a good map into good materials. - Episode 10: Kirsten Sparenborg (https://www.turnofthecenturies.com/). Tacoma map artist and chorographer Kirsten Sparenborg discusses her deep catalog of maps in ink and watercolor, her years in architectural illustration, an ill-starred mural commission, making her own pigments out of local rocks, and her next 10-panel 46 sq. ft. project. - Episode 9: Aurélien Boyer-Moraes (https://www.transit-map.com). Lisbon transit cartographer and designer Aurélien Boyer-Moraes talks learning to use a computer at 19, creating his first 3x4 ft. - Episode 8: Bill Marsh (https://store.philamuseum.org/philadelphia-pictorial-map-and-walking-guide/). Philadelphia cartographer and New York Times graphics editor Bill Marsh describes his 30-year project to map his adopted city, getting the Philadelphia Inquirer to chopper a photographer over the city on his behalf, his collection of hyper-dense axonometric maps, and the bygone days of hand-inked… - Episode 7: Travis Folk (https://newworldcartography.com/). Travis Folk, Green Pond wildlife biologist and map designer for New World Cartography discusses working with artist Tony Waters, radio-tracking northern bobwhites (quail) under the pines of the Conecuh National Forest, memorializing Aldo the Llewellin Setter on a map of game birds, and agreeing to… - Episode 6: Alex McPhee (https://awmcphee.ca/). Val Marie independent cartographer Alex McPhee describes teaching himself to make enormous reference maps, his pre-mapping road trips, rural Saskatchewanians’ surprise in finding every train station on his provincial map (they didn’t believe him), how cartographers need to observe people… - Episode 5: Kate Tarling (https://www.katetarlingtextiles.com/images/). Bristol textile artist and mapmaker Kate Tarling talks freehand machine embroidering coastlines onto lampshades, her preference for silk paints (despite the hassle), color inspiration from her garden, and how she does most of her sketching in her head during dog walks. - Episode 4: Sara Drake (https://saradrake.com). Fremantle mapmaker, artist and illustrator Sara Drake on her first globe, her two-year wait list, the challenge of photographing her ultra-detailed 3D maps, and adding to a piece until “someone physically wrestles it out of [her] hands. - Episode 3: Mike Hall (https://www.thisismikehall.com/). British illustrator and cartographer Mike Hall talks early mapping projects of his native Harlow, his favorite map aesthetic, the relaxing practice of coastline-tracing and how he will type and place 1,500 labels but will not make a “Where's Wally?” map. - Episode 2: Anna Eshelman (https://annaeshelman.com). Oregon cartographic designer, illustrator and production artist Anna Eshelman talks sketching Mt. Rainier while pulling 26-mile days on the Wonderland Trail, why she begins her illustrations with a blunt pencil, and the enormous manual shaded relief she’d finish if she had any time. - Episode 1: Alex Hotchin (https://alexhotchin.com/). Australian cartographer and illustrator Alex Hotchin talks about cycling from Scotland to Cambodia sans GPS and “a career drawing how beautiful the world can be. ## Related - [Evan Applegate](https://evanapplegate.com/): the cartographer behind these sites - [Radiant Maps](https://radiantmaps.co/): ultra-detailed LED-backlit illuminated maps - [The Map Consultancy](https://themapconsultancy.com/): maps and GIS for organizations