Anna Lindsay MacDonald graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design with a BFA in Metalsmithing and Jewellery Design in 2004. She is currently in her third and final year as a Craft Studio Resident at the Harbourfront Centre for the Arts in Toronto, Ontario. Lindsay has received awards such as Honourable Mention in Jewellery at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, and Best of Show at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, 2005. Publications include, Design Lines, Canadian Art, Object Magazine, and Metalsmith Magazine.

My work with maps began as soon as I moved to Toronto to take up residency at the Harbourfront Centre. As I navigated the city I was struck by the grid-like quality of the Toronto streets, the intersections and interwoven connections. The imposing urban sprawl I reduced in size to a more legible scale, neighborhoods became bracelets and rings, adornment objects as well as informative objects. I wanted the wearer to engage with their neighborhoods, with transparent acrylic pieces wrapped around their hands and fingers like tattoos, their walking history etched into their skin. The gold and silver dotted paths or the walk to work became the adornment object.

Philosophical issues in cartography emerged, the fact that maps are subjective documents oftentimes used by corporations and polititians to convey ownership. I was made aware that the publication I was relying on could've been more a document of bureaucratic history than anything else. I therefore began to fabricate my own neighborhoods by incorporating lace patterning into the streetscapes, my own cartographic truth.

This was a significant turning point in my body of work, the realisation that the networks resemble knots and lace. I began to think of my work as a modern form of lace making. Hand cut from metal and vinyl I used elements of product design and contemporary jewellery design to transform the informative systems into decorative motifs. I found that the language and semiotics of cartography lent themselves well to wearable art. Beyond the streets weaving themselves together, the dotted lines became opportunities for patterning and ornamentation, and the fleur-de-lis historically used to point North, became another lace motif to employ.

Our inherent tendency toward mathematical balance in apparent in our urban streets as well as in our history of ornament. My work is an ongoing study of this relationship.