Artist Spotlight: Marty Schnure & The Art of Maps

By Sierra McGivney

Photo courtesy of Marty Schnure.

In this profile of cartographer Marty Schnure, we uncover the philosophy that has influenced her creation of several beautiful maps for the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), the world-renowned AAC publication that reports the cutting-edge ascents and descents of each year. For Schnure, map-making is about blending geographical information while also evoking and displaying the relationship between that geography and whatever is important about that place to the map user—aka climbing routes, or the animal corridors of that area. Dive into this article to learn about the art of map-making, and how Schure thinks about the responsibility of a cartographer, the power of maps to express an idea, and more.