Coming of age in the late 70s and 80s, comics artist Bishakh Som would pore over maps of cities she’d never visited, tracing routes across the paper with her fingers and envisioning what the scenes on each street might look like. She read maps much like she read Tintin, American superhero floppies, and Anant “Uncle” Pai’s Amar Chitra Katha best-selling series of comics inspired by Indian history and mythology — they all opened up her imagination to places and ideas she could only, at this time, fantasize about.

That graphical curiosity eventually led Som to her primary discipline as a cartoonist, an art form she’s practiced for most of her life, though with plenty of detours along the way.

Born in Ethiopia, where her Indian parents were stationed by the United Nations, Som’s family relocated to New York City in the early 70s. There, her interest in graphic storytelling grew alongside a love for drawing. As she entered college, her parents weren’t entirely thrilled with the idea of her studying art; a career in architecture seemed like a more practical application of her talents, so she immersed herself in the field. After graduating from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1995, she worked in architecture firms full time, while applying her day job’s skills of composing built environments to her art. Read more via them.us