Mapping Sampsonia

Diane Samuels’ Mapping Sampsonia is a work-in-progress that is based on the people, the place, and the history of Sampsonia Way, a tiny inner-city alley in Pittsburgh, where Samuels has lived since 1980. The work is literally about the street–the roadbed about which Samuels says, “Over the years the road surface has been marked by a spectacular accumulation of cracks and potholes that trace a history and an archeology of the alley and the people who use it. The roadbed looks like a giant dark scroll covered with a delicate and beautiful line drawing that grows in complexity over time.”

Maps are one of the oldest forms of communication and one of the fundamental ways we construct and understand the world, find our place in it, and imagine other places. Map-making seeks to situate and give shape to the world and our future by translating the world into a portable form. In Close Readings, Samuels reminds us that maps are aide-memoires akin to creative non-fiction. And ultimately, the work in Mapping Sampsonia demonstrates an ethic of seeing and creating rooted in patience and wonder.