Amanda is the creator/owner of aespiedesigns. Professionally trained as an architect, she is an artist/ designer who is inspired to make art in many different forms. Amanda has always been very good at math, science, music, and art. Amanda plays violin, viola, and piano. She started music at a very young age, and this musical background influences her artwork. She studied architecture in school at Rice University. After years of creating artwork for friends and family, she decided to to focus on her passion for art and expand her hobby into a business.
Mapmaking is one particular way in which Amanda enjoys sharing her artistic expression and creativity. Her art maps combine her love of travel, music, her architectural studies, and her love of drawing and painting, all with a little touch of whimsy. Each map includes a musical element or a few measures from a song that might represent or reference a city. Every city has a unique spirit that sets it apart from all others, and Amanda strives to discover and convey the essence of a place in her art maps. Creating each map is a fascinating journey. She enjoys the design problem of carefully selecting the individual elements that will symbolize a city, and then allowing those elements to organically evolve into a cohesive and compelling cartographic representation of a metropolis. 
When not creating maps, Amanda also likes to draw and paint abstractly in acrylic and oil paint or watercolors and sculpt and design dolls inspired by her imagination or historical pieces of art.

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