Cartography Models Writing Ideas

Underground Railroad

Crossings, 2022

Three journeys—Eliza Harris, Edward Moxley, William Wells Brown—traced simultaneously across the same landscape. Sixty seconds of film from months of archival research, GIS mapping, and architectural drawing. Made for Crossings: Mapping American Journeys at the Newberry Library.

Eliza Harris, 1840s

From enslavement in Northern Kentucky to liberation in Canada. The white line traces the probable, the approximate—a journey that had to be invisible.

Edward Moxley, 1837

Thirteen people left Kentucky together on a Saturday night in May. Four arrived in Canada. Two lines, one map—freedom and capture on the same territory at the same moment.

William Wells Brown, 1834

From enslavement in New Orleans, Louisiana to liberation in Cleveland, Ohio.

Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail, 2022

A spatial visualization of the 2,000-mile overland route traveled by hundreds of thousands of emigrants between 1836 and 1869.

Astronomical Observation

Munsell Color & the Observatory

Diagrams at the intersection of color theory and astronomical observation—drawing systems that make the archive of the night sky legible.