maps

GET A TREASURE MAP WHERE THE MAP IS THE TREASURE.

Brendan Lorber creates hand drawn fantasy maps of ideas, lives, loves, poetry, and music.

He loves doing commissions and approaches all his projects with enthusiasm, respect, compassion, and discretion. Curious? Message him and say "Hi! I'd like a map of _____." Zero commitment!

His cartographic art is in The Museum of Modern Art, The Free Black Women’s Library, Opus 40 Gallery, Artists Space, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodland Pattern Center, The Scottish Poetry Library, and in private collections. They've been featured on CNN, NBC's The Today Show, and Oprah. He has also created maps for several books and for Radio City Music Hall.

He'd be happy to create a custom hand drawn map of your life, a romantic map of a couple's lives together, a map of your favorite musician, or writer, a map for a book you are writing or publishing. You'll be provided a map for a world better than this one.

They make wonderful gifts for a person close to you, or for a special occasion (wedding, anniversary, milestone birthday.) Because they are handmade, they take about a month to complete. If you're pressed for time, Brendan can send a letter letting the recipient know something unique is on its way.

Send a message and he'll send you the details!

He also makes hand-made prints of his poetry and music maps. You can get a signed and numbered print from his etsy shop Lyric Realms. Each is hand drawn and then letterpressed in an intimate edition on archival paper. The ongoing series includes geographic celebrations of Joni Mitchell, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Jeff Buckley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edgar Allan Poe, Prince, Frank O’Hara, Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, The Beatles, Robert Burns, Madonna, David Bowie, and John Ashbery.

They invite you to get lost within their wild topographies, and to discover yourself in new worlds.

NOTES ON THE MAPS

The geographic portrayal of the realms would be impossible without visual worldbuilding practices made available through Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons, and Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. But they owe an equal debt to the earthbound cartographers of the Age of Exploration. Master mapmakers like Al Idrisi, Fra Mauro, and Gerardus Mercator. Now that our usual habits, motives, and methods for movement and action have been so disrupted, these maps offer new techniques connecting to one another through allegorical voyages.