Biographical Note
Thomas R. Yanosky (1918-2014) enjoyed a long career as a cartographer, primarily at the U.S. Army Map Service, and, throughout his life, as an active artist. He entered the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1939, and began working as a commercial artist at the Washington Post. In January 1942 he began his cartographic trade as an apprenctice Topographic Draftsman at the U.S. Army Engineer Reproduction Plant (later the Army Map Service) at Fort McNair, and in May of that year relocting with Army Map Service to its new location at Brookmont, Maryland. During his career at the A.M.S., Mr. Yanosky was involved in several projects relating to the study of relief mapping and representation. His work on experimentation with shaded relief techniques is one of the major contributions to the field of cartography. He served as chief of the A.M.S. Shaded Relief section from 1948 to 1950, and he was also an instructor at the A.M.S. Training Center. He participated in the first and second "Symposiums on Shaded Relief," held in October 1968 and May 1970, which were organized by the Army Map Service in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey and members of the British military. During the 1950s he participated in the development of the A.M.S. Joint Operations Graphic (JOG) map series at 1:250,000 scale. He also assisted in the development of the U.S. Defense Department's physical "Wall Map of the World" (1969). Among his scholarly presentations was a talk entitled "Design and Color in Cartography," which was delivered at both the Directorate of Military Survey in London and at the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, England. Mr. Yanosky's artistic endeavors include pencil sketches, oil paintings, etchings, collages, and acrylics. In 1983 the Reston Times described his artistic style as following the principles of Euclidean geometry, or "dyanamic symmetry." He was elected to the Society of Washington Artists in 1954, the Society of Washington Printmakers in 1958, and the Artists' Equity Association in 1968. His art works have been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Arts Club, George Washington University's Dimock Gallery, and numerous other exhibits in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as various galleries in Arizona, where he lived from 1971 to 1978. Inevitably, Mr. Yanosky's training as an artist crossed over into his work as a cartographer. In 1964 he designed a mural for the front of Erskine Hall, Army Map Servive Headquarters, entitled "Cartography Through the Ages." It illustrates the long history of map making from 6th century Babylonia to military cartography of the 20th century. The mural is currently displayed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.