Daniel Huffman | daniel.p.huffman@gmail.com
One of the largest editions of the Map Gallery in recent memory greeted attendees to the 2011 NACIS Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. Forty-four separate entries packed the display room, offering everything from expertly-crafted reference maps to displays showing off the latest research and techniques. Visitors had plenty of beautiful and intriguing works to ponder, and kept the gallery busy throughout the duration of the conference.
Twenty-two of the entrants to the Map Gallery were also competitors in the Student Poster Competition, leaving attendees with the tough task of selecting only one winner. Despite a somewhat more involved balloting process, a sizable percentage of attendees took the time to evaluate the posters and cast a vote. When all were tallied, Alicia Iverson of Humboldt State University came away with the grand prize: $500 and the acclaim of her peers in the cartographic world. Her award-winning work, Mapping of Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir, traces out the spaces and journeys in portions of Eve Ensler’s book. Done up in dark tones with light type and subject features, it is a very visually striking narrative work.
2011 competition winner: Mapping of Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir
Also lauded by attendees was the second-place map, Perceptions of Athens, by Karla Sanders, a student at Ohio University. A surreal blend of cartography and dream imagery, it pushes at the outer bounds of cartography. It can be seen in this issue’s edition of Visual Fields.
The poster session for NACIS 2012 in Portland, Oregon is now beginning to take shape, and it promises to be every bit as large and diverse as that in Madison, if not more so. Students and professionals are encouraged to submit their work for display, and map gallery and poster competition entries will be accepted up through September 14th, 2012. For more information, or to register, visit www.nacis.org.