Natasha Mayers – Mapmaking Across Maine

I have been making maps on and off since 1981, when I was pregnant and needing to put the artist (me) at the center of her universe before she was knocked off-center. They were fanciful, colorful, subjective, semi-abstract maps, creating my own map vocabulary and symbols, borrowing and combining mapmaking traditions and techniques from different historical periods and cultures. Much of my work involved making experiential, interpretive place maps, views of my present and childhood locales, combining physical and human features of the landscape.

I took my love of maps to some of the mural-making residencies I did as a touring artist for more than twenty-five years (starting in 1983) with the Maine Arts Commission, during which time I facilitated more than 500 murals. Some of them were maps: historical/current, on walls/panels/utility poles, located indoors/outdoors, with students/adults in many schools and towns.

Maps can kindle our imaginations. They encourage discovery and interaction. Maps reveal the character and quality of places. They provide a structure for storing both geographic and experiential knowledge of a place. They are abstracted representations and teach us to think about the real world on both the abstract and concrete level. Maps can reinforce or broaden a sense of community (and foster a positive sense of place), raise consciousness and environmental awareness, recall history, design, and inspire.

Children love maps. When I first come into the classroom, they love to make long lists of all the things that could be put on a map. They love to map places that are important emotionally, places not found on a conventional map, like treehouses, hiding places, gardens, skateboard parks, the ice cream stand, etc. Developmentally appropriate approaches to mapmaking are useful: a gradual progression from the close-at-hand to the wider world, from panoramic views to aerial views, from a qualitative to a more quantitative understanding of scale. For third grade, for example, a neighborhood map is appropriate (with the donut shop); for the fourth grade, the community and watershed; for the fifth grade, the bioregion and beyond.

Sometimes we relied on the town elders’ visits to stimulate the students to paint their stories onto the maps, and often had photos, maps, and news clippings supplied by the town historical society. We almost always prized imagination and personal experience over geographic accuracy. We could also be inspired by regional geological maps, tax maps, population maps, land-use maps, hydrologic maps, contour maps, route maps, aerial photos, and cultural maps that reveal the original place names.

Talking walls are the best. Mapping can be a form of storytelling and claiming space. When I supervised a mural, Creatures of the Under and Above Worlds, at Pleasant Point (Sipayik), Maine, in 1992, the parents and grandparents came to hang out in the cafeteria to watch the children paint. They would tell them tales about the trickster characters they were painting, show them how to make Passamaquoddy designs, ask them to paint grandma braiding sweet grass and others making baskets, fishing, and going to the sweat lodge. They suggested the addition of all sorts of flora and fauna and cultural symbols. The mural was there in the central meeting space on the reservation for thirty years.

After the elders came to the Whitefield School to tell some local stories to the fourth and fifth graders, the students painted that history on the utility poles where it took place: the Irish at St. Denis Church, returning Civil War soldiers at the grange they built, the four mills located by a Sheepscot River bridge, the narrow gauge railroad at the site of the former station, the one-room schoolhouses, the former hospital, the Liberty Men and Kennebec Proprietors, etc. The children loved hearing about an old May Day tradition, so naturally, the instructions for making and delivering a May basket became the subject of one pole (ring the bell and run, and if they catch you, they can kiss you). Those painted poles were imaginative, exciting, informative, and engaging. They were art about the town, for the town, and by the children of the town, and helped Whitefield residents, during a time of tax caps, appreciate the school and students more. The painted poles helped foster a positive sense of place and ownership, of individuality/identity for the area, and provided unique views of the town in the most visible public spaces. They were featured in national and regional publications and guidebooks.

Some schools hired me to supervise murals that reveal the history of their town. Students in Auburn learned about child labor and painted the crying faces of the children at work in the shoe mills, and painted giant rats running over the mill roofs after hearing from one of the grandfathers about arriving at work and seeing rats in the piles of leather. Students in Raymond painted the History of Immigration, a map of the US with locations and jobs done by immigrants, surrounded by portraits of the students’ grandparents and their countries of origin. When a bunch of them all wanted to paint the Statue of Liberty, they decided that they all could paint their own version. It was delightful, and after that, on other murals, students often painted multiple versions of the same person or thing. On a mural about Champlain’s encampment on St. Croix Island, there are more than two dozen versions of Champlain’s portrait painted by Calais middle school students.

The Sanford and Saco middle school map murals combined local and national history portrayed chronologically and surrounded by portraits of famous Mainers and other Americans.

The Gardiner Town Map, across from the post office, was painted in 1999. The first graders washed the wall, the second graders painted the shoes along the bottom to represent the local shoe industry, the third graders painted the trains at the top, and the fourth graders painted all the rest.

In 2009, Shanna Wheelock (a local art teacher) and I initiated Lubec Arts Alive, “arting up the town,” to engage the community in painting a giant map of the past and present, for Lubec’s Bicentennial. I brought a bunch of well-known artists to Lubec for a week to draw portraits of beloved members of the community, paint visual street signs and storefronts, make documentary photos, and more. The Lubec map was mounted on the outside of the Lubec Historical Society (and later in a town park). It was painted by artists and non-artists of all ages. Assisted by the historical society, the map is filled with stories and history, with many images in sardine cans. This is a rare example of one of the few times I made the initial layout of roads so people would know where to paint.

Winthrop Talking Wall Historical Map is another example of a community map mural I facilitated. 250 people came to paint their homes, gardens, workplaces, social events, the historical buildings, town customs, textile, and lace designs from the local mills, flora and fauna, etc. over the course of two days. Some high school students laid out the roads and children under the age of eight were allowed to paint in the orange stripe near the bottom. One dad helped his baby hold a brush and paint a flower so he could show him his creation when he grew up.

I loved sharing my passion for maps, for painting, learning history, and hearing people’s stories while sharing my belief that everybody can make art and being delighted by the group’s combination of different styles and levels of painting. Sometimes I felt like a choreographer when I supervised murals. “Make it bigger! Smaller! Brighter! Use at least three colors! Paint the background last!” It always got better as it was painted. The whole was always greater than the parts. The collaborative efforts were fruitful and satisfying. A favorite memory is of a group of eight high school boys in Ohio who were so pleased with their finished painting on a giant highway column that they joined hands and danced round and round.