Mapping: Yosemite National Park

Yosemite was the first place where I felt grounded in California. Its vastness was new to me, but the feeling of disappearing into nature was familiar. I grew up exploring Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley and the Pocono Mountains, and I wanted to share that experience with my children.

We began bringing them to Yosemite when they were little, returning each summer to camp, hike, and learn the landscape together. These works map not only the park, but our family’s movement through it and the memories embedded in its trails.

YNP, Within, Without, I Walk

2026, acrylic and mixed media on linen, 72" x 60"

Every time I go to Yosemite, Ansel Adams is right there in my head, measuring what I'm seeing against what he already made famous. My visual memory is my superpower as an artist, so his photographs are hard to shake. I stopped trying to out-picture him and started paying attention to what he never photographed, the particular blue of the lakes and streams I keep painting into every version of this place.

I paint that blue every time, partly because it's beautiful, partly because I never forget it's also our drinking water, the same water running through the mountains I'm standing in. I layer maps and photographs with painted and stitched routes, bringing my own walk through the park into its shape. The landscape may be monumental, but this painting records my own physical and persona.

YNP, Within, Without, We Live

2026, mixed media on canvas, 60" x 48"

One photograph captures my family standing beside a glacier-fed lake, hesitating just before we plunged into the freezing water. It holds the anticipation, laughter, and discomfort of experiencing Yosemite with our whole bodies.

I layer photographs like this with maps, brochures, postcards, and paint, while stitched lines trace years of family hikes. The painting holds many moments at once: camping without electricity, carrying food into the high country, telling stories along the trail, and watching my children grow. It maps not only Yosemite, but our family’s passage through time.

Mapping: Yosemite National Park, Trails, Footsteps, and Waterways

2025, Acrylic and Thread on Linen, 32" x 59"

As we climbed toward a waterfall in Yosemite Valley, its spray reached across the trail and soaked our clothes. That physical encounter with the water changed how I experienced the map beneath my feet.

I slowly layered color and retraced the map's contours on raw linen, deciding what to emphasize and what to leave out, letting the stitched lines of our hikes move through the painted mountains, roads, and waterways until the landscape carried the shape of our own bodies moving through it.

Yosemite, Tuolumne Meadows Family Hikes

2025, Acrylic and Thread on Linen, 29" x 35"

On one twelve mile hike along the John Muir Trail, my young daughter decided she would go no farther. M&Ms and stories told along the way finally coaxed her through the last mile.

Tuolumne Meadows was our favorite part of Yosemite, and we returned to its high country each summer. I traced roads onto raw linen and stitched in the paths our family walked, so the mountains, water, and boundaries of the map carry our own footsteps through them.

Yosemite and Its Borders

2026, acrylic and thread on linen, 44" × 72"

Driving into Yosemite, the landscape appears continuous, yet crossing the park boundary changes everything. Entry passes, reservations, campgrounds, cleared trails, and ranger programs shape how we move through what appears to be wilderness.

This painting traces Yosemite’s entire boundary and brings together hikes from Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley. The stitched routes reveal a public landscape that is both wild and carefully mapped, protected, and managed.