Lake Ontario, the Gulf of Mexico and the Lines We Draw

I have always been fascinated by the human desire to divide the world into territories. Countries, counties, states, plots of land: we draw lines around places and give them names, turning geography into something we can claim. On a map, a border might be no more than a fine dotted line. In someone’s life, it can determine where they are allowed to live, whether they can return home, or where they feel they belong.

I have collected maps for more than 25 years, building an archive of approximately 40,000 pieces. My contemporary map art is created from original maps dating back over a century alongside more recent ones, and I find myself noticing the changes between them. Borders shift. Place names change. A territory that appears settled and permanent in one atlas looks different in another. Each map holds a version of the world at a particular moment.

I am drawn to the geometry of these divisions: the straight lines between states, the irregular edges of countries, the tiny dots and dashes separating one place from the next. There is something compelling about their visual order, especially when you consider the complicated human histories behind them. A line can look so simple on paper.

Underlying this is a question I return to in my work: what does it really mean to own a piece of the earth? We spend our relatively brief lives claiming our own small patches, while the land exists on a timescale far beyond us. I find the idea of custodianship more meaningful. Our attachment to a place can be profound, but it also carries a responsibility towards those who share it and those who will come after us.

Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” for US federal use brings these questions into sharp focus. His executive order of 27 August 2026 directs federal agencies to adopt the new name. To me, this is an extraordinary act of arrogance: treating a place, and the history held in its name, as something available for political rebranding.

Ontario has Indigenous origins. The Wyandotte Nation traces it to the Wendat word Ontari’io, commonly translated as “beautiful lake” or “great lake.” The name carries a relationship with the water that predates both modern Canada and the United States. Wyandotte Nation

It has also outlasted earlier colonial names. French maps called the lake Saint-Louis and Frontenac at different times, yet Ontario endured. That history makes the continued use of its name particularly meaningful to me. Museum of Indigenous People

In my mixed-media map collages, I bring fragments of different places and periods together. Original vintage maps are bonded to birch wood, laser cut and assembled by hand into geometric compositions. Distant places become neighbours. Borders are interrupted, and colour creates connections across them. Through this process, I explore migration, memory and belonging, alongside our persistent urge to divide.

I have been adding tiny fragments of maps bearing the names Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico into all of my recent works. They may be almost hidden among the many other places within each composition, but their presence is deliberate. It is my own small act of protest against the politically motivated attempts to rename them “Lake America” and the “Gulf of America”. The original names remain embedded within the work, carrying their history into a new setting. Choosing those fragments is a quiet but deliberate decision about what I want to preserve.

For all the lines we draw and the names we impose, I keep returning to the thought that we are temporary custodians of the places we inhabit.