We Are Part of Something Bigger

Landscape Architect and Artist Stephanie Hubbard Maps Her Way Through Ojai’s Taft Gardens

Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve installation by Stephanie Hubbard. | Photo: Marc Alt

Artist Stephanie Hubbard | Photo: Marc Alt

“The map is not the territory!” These are the first words that spring to mind when looking at the work of Stephanie Hubbard, the current artist-in-residence at the Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve in Ojai. This insight, from Alfred Korzybski, has a level of depth that makes the sentence appear more obvious than it is. He postulates that the map is a representation, not the actual territory, in the same way that a word for a thing, is not the thing itself. That language separation is crucial to understand not just what maps are, but what artists like Hubbard do.

The Death and Rebirth of the Map

“Maps help us connect to a place” is how Hubbard describes her map-making project. A landscape architect by profession, Hubbard’s connection to mapmaking is more than technical, it seems to be an embedded part of her whole being. For years, her job was to map out, plan, design, and build the surrounding landscapes for homes and gardens, but the artist inside felt the need for a deeper connection, to the land and to the self.

“I did a sculpture for my thesis project many years ago that explored the changes in a historic garden over time. I painted a map of each era of the site from the beginning to the current day on a layer of glass, and the glass layers were separated and staked so you could see the layers of history,” said Hubbard.

For the Taft Gardens residency, Hubbard, an Ojai resident, set out to interpret the digital maps of the gardens and the surrounding Los Padres National Forest and construct her own analog maps by abstracting away from the real space allowing for various interpretations to take place. Using geological and topographical maps, but also maps of the flora and the waterways, among others, Hubbard spent time sketching, painting, cutting, and pasting, moving components around and generally placing herself into the abstract space of the maps. Made on paper and translucent lightweight fabric, the maps are reminiscent of Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler abstract expressionist paintings. These later became a site-specific installation in the gardens, hung strategically between and on the wooden posts of the garden’s pergola, to be left to interpretation by wandering visitors.

Hubbard’s map-making seems to be part of a general revival or a movement back toward the analog and away from the digital realm. Millennials and especially Gen Z have become infatuated with cassette and VHS tapes, as well as film photography on the back of the forced digitization of every facet of their lives. Analog represents a lost art and an abandoned horizon of meaning and possibility in a world of digital futures that seem more and more distant and impossible. The return to map-making as an individual practice seems deeply rooted in this desire to create meaning out of a world that had abandoned connections and relationships in favor of profit and greed.

Maps Connect Us to Something Bigger than Ourselves

Work on fabric by Stephanie Hubbard. | Photo: Marc Alt

They locate us not just in space. More than that, maps locate us beyond the physical. Through different types of mapping, we are able to locate ourselves within culture, within time, or within our own inner worlds that we share with others. The term for this type of mental or cognitive activity is called “psychological mapping” or “psychogeography.” This practice creates internal representations of the individual’s surroundings and the maps created through these map-making practices, such as the “dérive” practiced by the Situationists in the 1960s, have led to certain revelations about the social conditions in which people and cities in particular find themselves. The dérive is a type of walkabout that the Parisian-based Situationists used to intentionally get lost in the city in order to create new experiences (or situations as was suggested by the informal group’s name). The goal of the dérive was to study the terrain of the city through the emotional disorientation resulting from getting lost. New “social” maps were formed as participants became keenly aware of their environment.

The dérive is still being practiced today, and map-making has expanded along with it. The dérive can be done on foot or in the car, all it takes is a sense for adventure and spontaneity, not just intellectual rigor. Smartphone users are able to download apps like Dérive — which shows a series of simple geography-based directions on a mobile device’s screen such as “follow a red vehicle” to create the dérive experience — and Randonautica — which offers three types of coordinates to choose from: an attractor, a void, or an anomaly that users are then able to follow.

It’s about the journey, not the destination. When Randonautica was released in 2020, it became a viral sensation. People loved the exploration, getting lost, and the random experiences they had along the way.

“How we process maps is very different on our phones than looking at a [real] map,” confirms Hubbard. “Taking the time to really look at a map can give you a sense of place and connect you to it more than a digital map, especially where all roads look the same and might be the only thing you notice on your phone because you are usually just trying to get from one place to another. That said, you really can’t know a place until you’ve experienced it in person.”

Artist Stephanie Hubbard with her Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve installation | Photo: Marc Alt
Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve installation by Stephanie Hubbard. | Photo: Marc Alt
Detail of art by Stephanie Hubbard. | Photo: Marc Alt
Work on fabric by Stephanie Hubbard, representing an “alluvial funnel.” | Photo: Marc Alt
‘Tiny Topography’ by Stephanie Hubbard. These small 5” × 5” gold boxes contain sketches of abstracted topography that invite close inspection. | Photo: Marc Alt

While the conceptual importance of the map cannot be underestimated, the printed map has more or less died a slow death. With digital maps available in everyone’s pockets or purses and ready at the push of a button, the road atlas, once a staple of gas stations and convenience stores, is now a kind of lost media and dead industry. Instead, the map had found a new home, on subreddits like r/MapPorn with its six million subscribers, where users share maps of every sort, ones they found or created themselves, and in the studios of artists like Hubbard. It’s through these new map-makers — and Hubbard falls into this category — that we may continue to orient ourselves in a world increasingly designed to do the opposite.

See stephanie-hubbard.com for more information on her work. Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve is open by reservation only for self-guided visits. See taftgardens.org for more information.