Category: cartography

Mapping Art: How Maps Guided a Texas Artist to a Successful Career

Christopher Alan Smith’s journey to becoming a prominent artist in Texas is a rather direct one. Born in 1971, decades before the rise of the internet and when families still climbed aboard their four-wheeled vessels for road trips, Smith fell in love with maps. Seated in the backseat with the multi-fold map stretched from end-to-end,…


Book Review: ‘Tales From the Queen of the Desert’: A Beautifully-Written Travelogue

Admittedly, the first I heard of Gertrude Bell was from watching the 2015 biographical film “Queen of the Desert,” starring Nicole Kidman. I was enchanted as was Kidman with Bell’s character. A fiercely independent woman, Bell decided to leave her comfortable life as a debutante in Victorian London and take to the desert. It was…