Review | Press Herald

Mayo Street Arts Pop-Up Gallery
January 1 - 29, 2021

Review by Jorge S. Arango for the Portland Press Herald

Shannon Rankin uses maps to express the constancy of change. Maps are fundamentally about charting and defining, fixing with exactitude some sense of place. Yet there are metaphorical maps as well: maps of the mind (where memory and experience are the sextants and compasses of a personal cartography), career maps (which navigate the path of our livelihoods), emotional maps (which bind us to expectations about relationships that don’t allow for growth and development), and so on. Yet boundaries keep shifting – glaciers melt, one country annexes another, we have revelations that shatter our identities, we get downsized, we grow apart and divorce. Rankin obscures and changes the neat grids, longitudes and latitudes of her maps using ink, salt and wax. By doing so, she captures the ephemeral reality and usefulness of any map.

– Jorge S. Arango