Rajiv Ramaiah’s “Mappucinos” chart the courses of real life people and events.

By Alexandra Botti

Most of us pass them every day without much notice. Once we have swiped our Charlie Cards and boarded the T, subway maps do not warrant much further thought. But a Somerville man has put these seemingly mundane charts that dot our city at very the heart of his work. From afar, his digital prints could almost pass for authentic MBTA maps. But trace your fingers along the bright lines of one of these pieces and you won’t find Park Street, Davis, or Downtown Crossing. Artist Rajiv Ramaiah’s metro-inspired prints – dubbed “Mappucinos” – don’t connect stops on a subway line, but rather the most intimate and important moments in people’s lives.

“I’ve always been a bit of a map addict,” Ramaiah says. Fueled by this obsession, several years ago he created a subway-design map in which the “stops” were important moments in the romance of two friends. Tracing the couple’s courtship, the print is comprised of everything from their first kiss to their honeymoon, connected as if by subway lines. Since then, Ramaiah has continued creating personalized, high-quality digital prints chronicling important events. The buyer simply chooses a set of 15-20 special landmarks for Ramaiah to use, and from these he imagines and designs a custom map.

A Baltimore native, Ramaiah moved to Boston in the late 1990s, where he became accustomed to passing subway diagrams day in and day out. “I took a lot of inspiration from older Boston T maps.” Using this motif as a basis means that at first glance his work may strike the viewer as a genuine subway map, but a closer look reveals a previously-hidden, personal story, something that Ramaiah says is at the core of what makes this work so captivating and unique. “It’s different than other art. It’s interactive.” He estimates that he has created 30 or so custom prints to date, many commissioned as gifts on a romantic theme (think Valentine’s Day). “The appeal of my custom pieces is that when one is hanging in someone’s home, it does stir curiosity,” says Ramaiah.

While the design itself – the lines, colors, patterns – is up to Ramaiah, who has a degree in visual arts from Brown University, the placement of the points on one of his Mappucinos is hardly haphazard. Hours of work go into giving each piece an element of geographic accuracy, with proportional distances between locations. This can present an interesting challenge when the narrative moves from place to place across the globe. A map that includes clusters of locations in Boston, Rome, and Peru, for example, might use line breaks to show longer distances. Ramaiah employs other typical subway map conventions as well, to keep their authentic feel while conveying the meaning of the piece.

Ramaiah has since branched out with the creation of his “edition prints.” These vary widely in theme, dealing with social issues, politics, the environment, and beyond. Two recent examples look at the last midterm congressional elections with pieces entitled “Red lines” and “Blue lines,” depicting locations separated along party lines, literally. A number of Ramaiah’s pieces map out the landmarks of an area or city, the first of which he created using the hills and squares of Somerville. Some are just for fun, Ramaiah says, like “Love Lines,” which is made up of the phrase “I love you” in the world’s major languages.

But Ramaiah does not restrict himself to the humorous, light, and easily viewed. Perhaps most striking among his recent edition pieces is his commemoration of 9/11, marking the 2011 anniversary. Using his typical motif, the piece connects the victims of the tragedy, represented by their home countries, on a black subway line. The absence of color normally associated with Subway stations, with bright lines fighting for attention on a giant map, is startling. The labels on the map – larger for countries that suffered more casualties than others – are faded to gray, so that from just a few steps back you cannot make them out. “From far away it looks like what might be a subway map but it is also a tangled web; a mangled mess” says Ramaiah. To make sense of that mess, you are forced, as the viewer, to get up close to the piece, to interact with it in a deeply personal way. “It is an intimate piece.”

Ramaiah’s wide-ranging work has thus far circulated local cities beyond Somerville, including Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Brookline, Roslindale, and the artist’s former home city of Providence R.I., and he is looking to move further afield. Also on display in various venues is the other side of Ramaiah’s artistic life: semi-abstract wood sculpture, often using elements of wood and metal. But for the most part, he says, he keeps his 3D and 2D work separate.

As for the future, Ramaiah imagines the possibility of a large-scale installation, perhaps wall-size, on a building. His work might appeal to people who work with or appreciate data visualization, and see the beauty of his work in that way. Therefore people in the sciences might be a good fit for a larger scale project in the future, he says. “There’s a bit of a geek aspect to it!” Ramaiah, who also continues to nurture his “geek” side with part-time work at a tech company doing graphic design and web development, sees himself continuing to pursue both his art and his tech start-up involvement, the design element of which is closely related to his Mappucinos.

As for the name he has given this collection, it is primarily meant to be an ear-catching play on words, but the artist says with a smile, “I always joke that it’s named after my friend’s adorable cat ‘Cappucino.’” Somerville residents can enjoy a frothy beverage of their own while taking in some of Ramaiah’s work. Mappucinos will be on display at the Porter Square Starbucks on Somerville Ave. beginning this week.

In Somerville, edition prints can currently be purchased at Blue Cloud Gallery in Ball Sq., or Grand in Union Sq. Pieces range in price from $70 to $100+. For more details on where to purchase edition prints and how to commission custom pieces, visit Raj’s website at http://www.arrtworks.com/.