Changing topography

Marcia Ruth wants her work to be touched. She assembles topographic maps of states and regions out of layers of wood like a puzzle, and she wants people to run their fingers over the terrain—like the Sierra Nevada stretching across the eastern border of California map. Eventually, the contact will change the sculpture's surface like the wind, rain and time do to the actual land. Ruth, who is in her 70s, only recently began making these maps, but previously, she worked as a teacher, so the interactive, educational and accessible elements to her work seem natural.