Hart Island

Hart Island is my second map and I made it for my brother-in-law who lives in New York City. I wanted to find a tiny island, but one with some buildings and more variety than Otter Island. Also, the name Hart runs in our family, so it caught my eye. But when I learned about Hart Island containing over 1 million burials it became a no-brainer.

One of the things I really like about this map is the balance of blue, green, sand, and red structures. This was the one where I felt like my style clicked into place. It’s still basically fancy paint by numbers, I just fill in different sections of 1 of 4 colors, but I love the outcome. I found a poetry book, “Hart Island” by Stacy Szymaszek and incorporated a line from her poem:

a woman applied
for a disinterment Hart
Island chaperone
leads her to “he calleth his
own by name”
manifest with a
number she chews
the mouth has to go dry a rose
a day a congenital
day