Metro Vancouver's intersections have been turned into minimalist art

Are they yoga poses? Blair Witch symbols?Spaghetti thrown against a wall?

Nope. They're just Metro Vancouver's weirdest intersections.

Illustrator Peter Gormanhas drawn 20 of the most oddly shaped crossings in the region and compiled them on a poster, transforming a part of everyday urban life into minimalist art.

Removed from their surroundings, the intersections take on a newfoundmeaning.

Suddenly, the junction at Kingsway and Imperial looks like a person diving head-first. The on and off ramps at Knight, Marine and the Knight Street Bridge make the intersection look like a butterfly.

"There's a really bordered nature to the city," Gorman saidby phone from his home in Hawaii.

"It's kind of interesting how cities that actually are on a grid still tend to have these really wacky intersections."

The poster is part of aproject called Barely Maps, whichfeatures Gorman's maps of North American citiesbased on a year-long bicycle trip that he took around the U.S. and Canada between 2014 and 2015.

Vancouver was one of his stopovers. For the poster, Gorman chose intersections that stuck out from memory, and researched notorious ones that mystify drivers (think Granville and Garden City in Richmond).

He also surveyed a map and picked crossings that looked plain weird.

Gorman then spent about four days last year drawing the shapes in Adobe Illustrator.

Unexpected success

Interest in the poster took off Monday after Gormanshared it online, drawingenthusiastic responsesfrom Reddit users.

Some pointed outintersections they would have added, including Broadway, Main and Kingsway, and the Cassiar Connector.

"People don't really have any relationship with [intersections]besidessitting in traffic and being confused by stoplights," Gorman said.

"Puttingthe spin on it and seeing people's reaction to something that they're usually annoyed by is really fun."

The response, in fact, has been consistentlyfervid since Gormandesigned his first intersection map of Seattle in 2017.

Orders came in so fastthat Gormanhad to order 1,000 shipping tubes to his apartment.

He's hoping to self-publish abook which will feature more peculiar intersections in cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and New York by this Christmas.

"It's been an incredible surprise and I feel really grateful every day for that," he said.