Two years ago, when I started making illustrated watercolor maps, I called them just that: illustrated watercolor maps. It was a perfectly accurate description. But somewhere along the way, I realized that accurate wasn't quite the right word for what these maps actually do.
A name should tell the truth about a thing. And the truth about these maps is bigger than their medium or their format.
I have a doctorate in child psychology, and for many years I taught at a small liberal arts college, introducing students to ideas from across the broad field of psychology — cognitive, environmental, neuropsychological. I never expected those ideas to follow me into my art studio. But in the process of making these maps, I've come to believe they were always pointing here.
Memory Anchors
The concept of a memory anchor comes from cognitive psychology. Memory anchors are the specific places, moments, and sensory details that tie us to a place we love.
I attended Carleton College, and my own anchors are vivid. The bells of Willis Hall chiming the hour across campus. And on certain days, the smell of puffed wheat drifting up from the Malt-O-Meal factory in Northfield, whether you wanted it to or not.
None of those are visual. And yet when I look at a painting of Willis Hall, all of it comes back — the sound, the smell, the particular feeling of a Carleton morning. That's the thing about memory anchors: a single image can unlock all the senses at once. I can't make an auditory map or a scratch-and-sniff map (though the idea has its charms). But I don't need to. The visual image is the key. The rest of the memory walks in behind it.
When I make a map, I'm deliberately hunting for those anchors — the spots and landmarks that, for the people who loved a place, will work exactly like that. Not everything makes it onto the map. Just the right things.
Place Attachment
Environmental psychologists have a term for what happens when a place becomes emotionally significant to us: place attachment. Researchers Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford describe it as a bond involving affect, cognition, and behavior all at once — not just a feeling, but a whole orientation toward a place (Scannell & Gifford, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2010).
For alumni, this attachment runs especially deep, because college is often where so much identity formation happens. That place becomes part of your story. Part of you.
For alumni, a campus map isn't just geography — it's a portal back to the most formative years of their lives.
Place Cells
Here is the part I find almost magical.
Neuropsychologists have discovered that we have specialized neurons in the hippocampus called place cells — cells that fire specifically when we are at, or remember, a particular location. They were first identified in 1971 by neuroscientist John O'Keefe, whose work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014. Together, these neurons form what researchers describe as an internal map of the world.
Your brain doesn't just record places. It builds a dedicated neural map of them.
When someone looks at a Memory Anchor Map of their college campus and really takes it in, something is happening neurologically. Their place cells are activating. Their brain is, in a very real sense, going back there.
Where It All Comes Together
I think being both an artist and a psychologist puts me in a unique position. I can ask the research questions — Why do places matter? How does memory work? What creates belonging? — and I can answer them through art. The result, I hope, is work that resonates at a deeper level, because it was designed from the start to connect with the parts of us that are genuinely wired for place.
Memory Anchor Maps. Not a souvenir, but a portal.
Interested in a Memory Anchor Map for your college? I'd love to hear from you.
References
O'Keefe, J., & Dostrovsky, J. (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map. Brain Research, 34(1), 171–175.
Scannell, L., & Gifford, R. (2010). Defining place attachment: A tripartite organizing framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(1), 1–10.