Karen O’Leary is famous for creating hand cut paper maps of popular cities.
Careful elimination of unnecessary parts results in a beautiful artwork with the sharp contrast between the solid and void.
Singapore
Vancouver
Sydney
Atlanta
Manhattan
San Francisco
London
New Orleans
Seattle
Madrid
Also check out: Google Maps Envelopes and Matchsticks Globe
Eric
This guy must have a lot of patience.
Oct 8th, 2010
Noni
This is soo amazing!
Oct 8th, 2010
kcantu
holly, THAT IS PATIENCE.
Oct 8th, 2010
jumanicus
total mind bogglingness :0
Oct 9th, 2010
hamid
great idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oct 9th, 2010
hersheylover
that is cool but hard to use
Oct 9th, 2010
BBQ
It’s very beautiful!
Oct 9th, 2010
Reckybuh
Remind me never to go on the Amazing Race with this guy…
Oct 9th, 2010
Pajadox
Well European cities had to be pretty harder American ones.
Oct 9th, 2010
Art of Concept
I can’t believe we all thought about the same thing…patience! Outstanding patience, but heck look at the results!
Oct 9th, 2010
Lee
Why spend hours doing this by hand when you can achieve far more complex designs in literally minutes by using a plotter? (Plotter as used in the sign writting industry)
Oct 9th, 2010
Cory
wow, interesting to see how boring the american cities look
Oct 9th, 2010
no way
this is done with laser cutter..no way with hand
Oct 9th, 2010
mea
it’s amazing
Oct 9th, 2010
AD
Misleading title.
Well, obviously, he used a hobby knife to cut it and not his hand.
Oct 10th, 2010
Sarah
Wow! I especially love Sydney!=)
Oct 10th, 2010
cerulean
I love how people are assuming that it’s a guy that did these. I don’t know many guys named “Karen”.
Oct 10th, 2010
Stuart Halliday
Reminds me of those ancient Chinese cravings of bone.
Nice.
Oct 10th, 2010
Poris
I’ve made such a thing for a class using a cnc laser cutter.
Took 20 minutes.
Oct 10th, 2010
2HIt6
It must be hard to navigate in USA.. with grid like streets.. i mean its good for planning but.. every street will seem.. very similar to the next (in terms of road wise)….><
Oct 10th, 2010
Mia Lazar
Nice, cool idea, buth somone mention CNC …
Oct 12th, 2010
Roberto
great! but…. where is the paper map of Morelia Mich. Mexico??????????? jeje …. ciao
Oct 12th, 2010
Hamzilla
He should do a time laps of him cutting it out! Haha
Oct 14th, 2010
Raads
@ Cory LOL! thats is so true
@ cerulean hahaha! thats exactley what i was thinking!
well there’s nothing else to say, cuz everyone else took what i was gonna say :D
Oct 14th, 2010
jason
hersheylover:
“that is cool but hard to use”
So do you honestly think this is sold at your local gas station? WTF are you talking about?!! It’s hanging on a wall you idiot, not sitting in your trunk.
Oct 15th, 2010
ALP
Beautiful!
Oct 17th, 2010
raymond simandjuntak
wow !!! this is awesome.. if i doin that, the paper must be ended in the trash bin.. ahahaha..
Oct 19th, 2010
nikki
for all of you saying this could be easily done with a plotter, likewise, a hand painting can be easily digitally reproduced but the beauty is in the time that went into each brush stroke! and the fact that you have an original piece of art
this takes amazing talent and i am throughly impressed with HER (note that its not a “he” as many of you said) talent!
Oct 21st, 2010
Raoz
Very impressive… However what makes a person do that, I mean that takes a lot of times and patience…
Oct 26th, 2010
Jooj
love it !
Nov 7th, 2010
B3N
i’ve never seen before, it’s high artistic
Nov 8th, 2010
Quinn
I think the real beauty of this is that he had the paitence to cut it out by hand (most likely with an x-acto, which yes, IS considered “by hand” because you USE YOUR HANDS) rather than taking the easy way out and allowing technology to do the work for you.
That, my friends, is art.
Nov 11th, 2010
Comatoast
Seriously I admire the patience. However in we are a digital world now and what you cut out of paper is super artistic…… Wait I can’t stop thinking is kids saying he did what? It is imperfect! We can do better in mins. Let us build on that! I would hang it on my wall though.
Nov 11th, 2010
easy peasy
don’t know why people find this so impressive. Get an exacto knife and trace out a map on some paper = voila! Grade 2 art class.
Nov 21st, 2010
dull
How dull this bloke must be. Nothing special.
Nov 21st, 2010
Lili Fugit
Why does everyone assume a GUY did this? It’s a woman!
And it’s pretty awesome. These would look great on a black background.
Dec 10th, 2010
Ciel
I think it’s great – you don’t normally see the patterns in a map when all the details are printed on, but this makes you look at a map in a totally different way!
It’s interesting to see that the US cities are primarily in a grid pattern. It would be interesting to do one of a city in the UK (not London!) as I think it would look fairly random.
Dec 10th, 2010
Rob
As pieces of art I think they are fascinating. Manhatten is my favourite.
Dec 23rd, 2010
alice
the real fun here is when you put one of these on a sunbather’s back and turn off their alarm clock…
Dec 25th, 2010
Barb
I now have one of my very own made by Karen! It is a map of our town! It is very unique and fun to see how exact the streets and rivers run! It is so Amazing! Thanks Karen!
Dec 27th, 2010
sachi
Impressive!
Any plans for… Tokyo?
Dec 30th, 2010
Alex
Corey: “wow, interesting to see how boring the american cities look”
I think perhaps the American cities were simply planned out better (and certainly more organized) thanks to being developed in the modern era. A city in Italy based on a thousand year old design is bound to be much less refined. In addition, European cities appear to have several epicenters around landmarks that eventually connected in a jumble of streets.
Jan 23rd, 2011
Christian
london looks intense
Feb 10th, 2011
Craig Moyer
These are pretty cool (because she did them by hand), but theyre just figure-ground drawings. Nothing too special, you do many of these the first few months of planning school.
Feb 11th, 2011
Mack
Impressive, but completely sad in every way that anyone would spend the time to make them. Bravo, you made a bunch of useless fragile pieces of paper that probably took days to make. Why not put that much energy into something useful?
Mar 7th, 2011
Apolonio Mai
This guy must be a monk.
From Belize Central America
May 28th, 2011
Anna K
Wow! I am ipressed! Such a hard work to do! Well done!
Aug 1st, 2011
jack
how can i get one?
Aug 1st, 2011