: rendered at 15,000 X 10,000 :.

Brownsville is the southernmost border town in the state of Texas. Similar to my “Ciudad Paso” maps, this map features land in both America (Brownsville) & Mexico (Matamoros, Tamaulipas) and literally focuses on border issues like immigration.

Using the same elements of Charlotte Spheres, I decided to make another version of this type of Lenz-influenced map. Unlike the previous version, which featured the spheres completely centered, I chose to move the spheres around to achieve a desired result.

Specifically, I noticed that a few of the spheres (four to be precise) hovered over the border facility where cars are waiting in line (below) to cross into America/Mexico. If you look closely, you can see the border/bridge at 3 different spatial scales. This visual element is what I like the most about using the spheres in my maps because it forces your eye to move around the page to identify places where the geography is the same and where the scale is different. One drawback, however, is that I cannot accurately predict how much magnification the spheres will produce. This map, for example, was slightly overprojected (see the graininess below), but unless I am printing it at it’s largest size, its hard to tell the degree to which the imagery was overprojected. I chose to render the map at 15Kx10K instead of the normal 18Kx12K to allow for 3,000 pixels worth of magnification to take place, yet after looking at the results, I probably should have rendered it at 12Kx9K. Oh well, thats the beauty of trial & error; next one will be better.

View the Google Map of Brownsville, Texas.

View the rest of the details:

: detail :

: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

Related Texas Entries:

• DFW Quilt #2
• DFW Quilt
• The 1910 Publication Calendar of the Palestine Daily Herald from the Chronicling America Newspaper Collection [100 Year Old News]
• Brownsville Spheres
• syndicated in Taiwan, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Austin, Little Rock, and Lincoln, Nebraska
• 2008 Urban America Calendar
• University of Texas at Austin Quilt #3
• University of Texas at Austin Quilt #2
• University of Texas at Austin Quilt
• San Antonio Quilt #2
• San Antonio Quilt
• San Antonio Sprocket #2
• San Antonio Sprocket
• Houston Mandala
• Polar Coordinates of Austin, Texas [square]
• Austin Quilt #2
• Austin Quilt
• Dallas Quilt #3
• Dallas Quilt #2
• Dallas Quilt
• Ciudad Paso Quilt #3
• Ciudad Paso Quilt #2
• Ciudad Paso Quilt
• Houston Quilt 2
• Houston Quilt