Friday Favorite: Dan Linden

9/27/2013

This Friday’s featured artist is Dan Linden and his Cut Maps!

Dan Linden and his Cut Maps

Dan writes:
Cut Maps originally started as an attempt to create an interesting art print of my small neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. A graduate of The Ohio State University in Mechanical Engineering, I have always been interested in technology, art, and the combination of the two. Inspired by my hometown of Columbus and its thriving art scene, I wanted to create a unique piece that celebrated that and the sense of ‘home’ I feel when I’m in the city.

What began as a tracing of my small neighborhood from Google Maps slowly grew into the streets around it…and then the streets around the city center… and so on. Twenty hours later I had traced hundreds of streets and completed nearly the whole city. What I had was a beautiful representation of the Columbus street map.

Columbus, Ohio

My favorite part of the design is the way people respond to it. There is something extremely strong in the connection between people and their hometowns. When friends looked at the Columbus Cut Map, they were intrigued and curious about the strange intersecting lines and spaces, but when I look at it I know almost every road. And this soon proved to be true of other people and other cities. As word spread about my map, I got requests both for the Columbus map and for other cities, whose residents wanted representations of their own hometowns to display proudly. I now have maps for over 40 different cities and continue to take requests for custom pieces.