Map Lines, Memory Lines: Turning Discarded Atlases into Cartographic Collage Art

By Soh and Soh Art

An old road atlas has a particular kind of silence. Its pages may be creased at the corners, softened at the spine, marked with circles around towns that once mattered, or folded open to a coast that someone meant to visit. In the age of phone navigation, many paper maps have lost their practical authority. Yet as art materials, they still carry a dense visual language: contour lines, rivers, grids, place names, borders, ferry routes, symbols, and the small human drama of choosing a direction. This Soh and Soh Art post explores cartographic collage, a recycled-art practice that turns unwanted maps, damaged atlases, and obsolete travel papers into layered works about memory, movement, and place.

Maps are especially powerful because they are never blank. Before the artist cuts a single shape, the paper already contains decisions about what is important, what is named, what is separated, and what is connected. A discarded atlas page is therefore more than waste paper. It is a printed argument about the world. When artists cut, tear, weave, draw over, or rearrange those pages, they are not merely decorating with old graphics; they are re-mapping the material’s meaning. Roads can become veins, coastlines can become feathers, rivers can become wrinkles in a face, and borders can dissolve into abstract pattern.

The environmental context makes the material worth handling carefully. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that paper and paperboard made up the largest component of U.S. municipal solid waste in 2018, with 67.4 million tons generated, or 23.1 percent of total municipal solid waste generation. About 46 million tons were recycled that year, a 68.2 percent recycling rate, while 17.2 million tons were landfilled.¹ The American Forest & Paper Association more recently estimated the 2024 U.S. paper recycling rate at 60 to 64 percent, representing around 46 million tons of recovered paper, or about 125,000 tons per day.² These figures do not mean every map should be removed from recycling. They suggest a better rule: use obsolete, damaged, donated, or already-unwanted maps for art, and return clean unused scraps to the paper stream whenever possible.

Why Maps Make Strong Recycled Art

A map page gives the artist three gifts at once: line, memory, and scale. The line appears first. Roads, railways, boundaries, and rivers create ready-made drawing systems that can be followed or contradicted. A maker can cut along a highway, let a river edge define a bird’s wing, or use a city grid as the shadow pattern in an abstract portrait. Unlike plain coloured paper, map paper invites conversation. Its printed information resists total control, which makes the collage feel discovered rather than manufactured.

The second gift is memory. A travel map may remind one viewer of migration, another of childhood holidays, and another of distance from home. Fast Company’s profile of artist Shannon Rankin describes how she slices, folds, and rearranges paper maps into geometric patterns, architectural collages, and works connected to landscape and anatomy. Rankin is quoted explaining that “maps are subjective” and that every map is an interpretation to which viewers bring personal meaning.³ That statement is a useful foundation for studio practice. A map collage does not have to represent a place accurately. It can represent the emotional experience of trying to understand where one has been.

The third gift is scale. Maps compress continents, neighbourhoods, mountains, and oceans into a surface that fits the hand. Collage reverses that compression. Small fragments can be enlarged through attention; a thin road line can become the main gesture of an artwork; a blue lake can become an eye or a petal. The artist shifts the viewer between distance and closeness, geography and intimacy.

Map feature	Visual possibility	Best use in collage	Studio caution
Road networks	Branching lines, movement, pulse	Veins, tree limbs, hair, feathers, water ripples	Avoid making the page too visually busy; give dense areas breathing space.
Coastlines and rivers	Organic edges and flowing contours	Silhouettes, waves, leaves, figure outlines	Cut slowly so thin paper does not tear unpredictably.
Colour-coded regions	Soft blocks of tone	Background fields, skies, abstract mosaics, patchwork	Test adhesive first because some map inks can smear when wet.
Place names and symbols	Textural detail and narrative clues	Accent fragments, hidden messages, memory points	Be sensitive with sacred sites, private addresses, and politically charged borders.

Artists Who Show What Map Paper Can Become

Contemporary paper artists have already demonstrated that old maps can carry serious conceptual weight. Upcyclist’s survey of artists working with maps describes Claire Brewster, Ed Fairburn, Nikki Rosato, Matthew Cusick, and Jennifer Collier, noting that these makers are not simply saving paper; they choose maps because the medium can express ideas that other papers cannot.⁴ Their work provides useful inspiration for anyone beginning a recycled-map project.

Claire Brewster uses old and out-of-date maps and atlases to create delicate cut-outs of birds, insects, flowers, and imagined natural forms. Upcyclist quotes her practice as being about “retrieving the discarded, celebrating the unwanted and giving new life to the obsolete.”⁴ This is one of the clearest statements of recycled art’s emotional potential. The discarded object is not hidden. It is chosen, honoured, and made agile again.

Ed Fairburn works differently. He draws portraits over maps, using rivers, roads, and contours to support facial structure. Upcyclist quotes him explaining that he studies both the terrain and the subject’s physical attributes, then searches for opportunities to synchronise the patterns before building tone.⁴ For Soh and Soh Art makers, this suggests a generous principle: let the found page teach the image. Instead of forcing a portrait onto any map, look for roads that already curve like cheekbones, rivers that already suggest hair, or elevation lines that already behave like wrinkles.

Nikki Rosato’s map works also connect geography to the body. According to Upcyclist, her technique often removes land masses so roads and rivers remain, creating two- and three-dimensional works that resemble human vessels and relationship networks.⁴ Matthew Cusick, meanwhile, uses collected maps for detailed collages ranging from portraits and landscapes to waves and abstractions.⁴ Together, these artists show that a map can become botanical, figurative, architectural, anatomical, or oceanic without losing its original identity.

A Project Direction: The Memory Map Collage Panel

A strong first project is a memory map collage panel. The goal is not to make a readable map. The goal is to build a new image from cartographic fragments while allowing some routes, names, colours, and borders to remain visible. Choose a subject that naturally relates to movement: a bird, a wave, a tree, a hand, a doorway, a portrait silhouette, or an abstract spiral. These forms work well because they can be assembled from many small directional pieces.

Begin by gathering material responsibly. Look for outdated road atlases, torn tourist maps, damaged travel brochures, misprinted map pages, old school geography sheets, or duplicate maps from charity shops and library sales. Avoid cutting rare, historically significant, or culturally sensitive maps unless you understand their value and have permission to alter them. Recycled art should not confuse destruction with transformation. The best material is ordinary, abundant, and already unwanted.

Sort the maps by colour and line quality before cutting. Put blue water areas in one pile, pale land tones in another, dense city grids in another, and bold highways or borders in another. This simple sorting step changes the process from random collage into painterly selection. The artist begins to see map fragments as a palette: blue for shadow, green for growth, cream for quiet background, red roads for pulse, black grid lines for structure.

Next, prepare a sturdy base. Reclaimed mat board, a clean cardboard backing, a wood offcut, or a panel from a damaged frame can work. If the map paper is thin, seal the base lightly with matte medium or a neutral acrylic ground so adhesive does not soak unevenly into the surface. Sketch the main shape with pencil, but keep the drawing loose. Cartographic collage becomes most interesting when the found lines participate in the final form.

Stage	Purpose	Practical method	Design question
Source	Choose responsible materials	Use damaged, outdated, duplicate, or donated maps	Is this page truly unwanted, or should it be preserved?
Sort	Create a map-paper palette	Group fragments by colour, density, and line direction	Which printed marks should remain legible?
Cut	Shape the new image	Use scissors for organic forms and a craft knife for clean edges	Are you following the map’s lines or deliberately crossing them?
Layer	Create depth and rhythm	Overlap fragments from broad background to small accents	Does each piece add meaning, movement, or contrast?
Seal	Protect the surface	Use thin matte medium, applied sparingly in layers	Does the finish preserve the paper’s tactile quality?

Cutting, Layering, and Composing

For a bird composition, cut the body from a large land-coloured region and build the wings from road fragments that point outward. Let blue waterways become shadows under feathers. Place a few readable place names near the breast or tail as small narrative sparks, but do not cover the whole bird with text. Restraint makes the remaining words more meaningful. For a wave composition, use curved coastlines and blue map areas, then layer pale land fragments as foam. For a portrait silhouette, follow Fairburn’s example in spirit: allow the existing map structure to suggest facial planes rather than drawing a face over the paper mechanically.

Adhesive choice matters because map paper can be thin, coated, or brittle. A glue stick is useful for studies but may not hold permanently. PVA glue can work if thinned slightly and brushed evenly, but too much water may wrinkle the page. Matte medium gives a cleaner finish for more refined pieces. Apply adhesive to the back of each fragment, position it with tweezers or clean fingers, and smooth from the centre outward with a scrap of release paper. Keep a dry cloth nearby to remove excess glue before it dries glossy.

Layer from large to small. Start with a calm background of broad pieces, then add mid-sized shapes that define the subject, then finish with narrow lines, small place names, or contrasting fragments. If everything is equally detailed, the viewer will not know where to look. Dense city grids are best used as accents or focal areas; quiet rural or ocean regions can provide rest. This balance is especially important in recycled art, where the excitement of found detail can tempt the maker to use too much.

One elegant method is the route-line stitch. Cut long, thin strips that follow roads or rivers, then use them like drawn lines across the collage. They can outline a leaf, trace the spine of a fish, or connect separate panels in a triptych. Another method is the border dissolve, where political boundaries are cut into fragments and rearranged until they become a cloud, garden, or abstract field. This can be visually beautiful, but it should be handled thoughtfully. Borders may represent real histories and conflicts, so the artwork should avoid trivialising places or communities.

Finishing the Work Without Erasing Its Past

A finished map collage should still feel like paper. Heavy varnish can make the surface look plastic and can flatten the delicate differences between inks, folds, and page fibres. A thin matte seal is usually enough for protection. If the work will be framed behind glass, sealing may be minimal. If it will remain exposed, apply two light coats rather than one heavy coat. Let each layer dry fully so trapped moisture does not cloud the paper.

Edges can be left raw, wrapped around the panel, or framed with recovered cardboard strips. A simple shadow frame works well because the slight depth reinforces the idea that the map has been lifted out of its original function. If the work includes personal or family maps, consider adding a small note on the back identifying the place, date, or story. This private annotation does not need to be visible to viewers, but it preserves the work’s memory layer.

Scrap management should continue through the whole project. Keep clean unglued map scraps for future collage or return them to paper recycling if local rules allow. Separate adhesive-heavy fragments, tape, plastic-laminated covers, and glossy coatings that may not be accepted in ordinary paper recycling. The aim is not to turn every speck into art at any cost. It is to make a thoughtful object while respecting the larger material system that paper belongs to.

Closing Reflection

Cartographic collage is powerful because it begins with a material that already knows how to point elsewhere. A map was made to guide the eye across distance, but in the studio it can guide the hand into memory. The artist does not have to erase the roads, rivers, borders, and names printed on the page. Instead, those marks can become the pulse of a bird’s wing, the current of a wave, the grain of a tree, or the quiet architecture of a face.

For Soh and Soh Art, the beauty of discarded atlases lies in this meeting of usefulness and afterlife. The map may no longer be accurate enough for travel, but it can still be accurate to feeling. It can describe how routes tangle, how places remain inside us, and how unwanted paper can become a new kind of landmark. In that sense, recycled map art is not only a way to reuse old material. It is a way to admit that every journey leaves fragments, and that careful hands can turn those fragments into form.

References

1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Paper and Paperboard: Material-Specific Data”.
2. American Forest & Paper Association, “Paper & Cardboard Recycling”.
3. Kyle VanHemert, Fast Company, “Gorgeous Collages Made Entirely Of Old Maps”.
4. Antonia Edwards, Upcyclist, “5 paper artists who make incredible artworks from old maps”.