The Stoddard, Wis., native is fascinated by the distant pasts they reveal. The stories they tell.
“They’re like visual history books,” she said. “Each map says so much.”
She’s turned that fascination into an art — finding, restoring and replicating old maps, then creating art on top of the prints.
A selection of Middleton’s work will be displayed and available for purchase at Blooming Grounds and the Minnesota Marine Art Museum gift shop through the end of the month. She’ll also host a meet-and-greet at from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday at Blooming Grounds.
Each of Middleton’s pieces begin with a search for a historic map — Middleton scouts them out in bookstores, libraries, eBay, and even the Library of Congress.
Middleton, who went to school in La Crosse and Winona and is now based in Montana, is generally on the hunt for original maps from the 1500s to the 1900s that have a natural composition and aren’t too damaged, she said.
She’s especially attracted to ones with historical significance. Some represent a snapshot in time, like one map she’s worked with that depicts California as an island. Others have an element of whimsy in the ornate illustrations along the borders. The collection she’s showing in the Winona-area focuses in part on historical fur trade routes through the region.
She takes the maps that stand out and has them scanned as a black-and-white image, restoring elements that are hard to read. She then paints on top of the reproductions using watercolor and tea.
These days people generally use their phones or GPS to find their way around, she said, and the maps that are still produced today are largely utilitarian. So the antiquarian maps she works with more and more are works of art in and of themselves, she said, “loaded with human knowledge and understanding.”
The way Middleton sees it, adding color to the math breathes a new life back into the maps, creating an opportunity for them to become a centerpiece in the home, she said. There, they can incite learning, inspire great conversations and, perhaps, spark an interest and an early understanding of geography for kids.
“That’s something that makes the work feel really meaningful,” she said.
