A Right Brain Assessment of the MTA
#art #maps #engineering #me #quoteoftheday #inspiration #nyc #mta
I’m a creative at heart—I love art, music, and books. Maybe that’s why I have such a deep appreciation for things like engineering and cartography—the stuff of left brain genius. The precision involved is admirable: the ability to capture a city’s layout, its topography, its directionality—all distilled into lines and symbols on a page.
Maps, to me, are masterpieces. The fact that someone can make sense of a sprawling geography—and translate that understanding into an image is incredible. Maps impose artistic order on complexity.
Take the New York City subway map. It’s one of my favorite examples of functional beauty. It represents art, utility, and conviction—all in a single document. Someone studied the fast-paced city, worked with engineers, crunched numbers, and laid out a system so sound that millions of people navigate it daily. Trains arrive, we descend into tunnels, and we end up exactly where we’re supposed to be.
Most of the time.
Every now and then, we board the Express when we meant to take the Local—or another variation that sets us slightly off course.
The MTA map isn’t just a guide; on occasion, it can feel like a pop quiz in patience, personality, and spatial reasoning. It tests a sense of direction or a sense of humor.
But sometimes, the best way to get back on track is to first embrace being off it.
Staying the course is satisfying—it gives us direction and stability. But veering off it— is humbling. It’s where growth happens, where unexpected insights emerge. We discover our adaptability, our resourcefulness, and our creativity. We adjust. We reroute. We figure it out. And often, we end up somewhere far more interesting than we imagined.
Both paths matter. Structure keeps us steady. Detours keep us sharp.
Illustration of winding lines and colors inspired by a photo of La Lavande Flowers in Frances Palmer pottery, third photo below.
My illustration with the color zapped using Instagram’s Moon filter :)
Fraenkel Gallery #repost photo of La Lavande Flowers in Frances Palmer pottery:
Vintage New York MTA map:
