throwback project: the reckoning lyric book

in late 2011 i wanted to play with display type a bit so i made this lil ‘zine style book for needtobreathe’s abum “the reckoning,” which was released around the same time. the project was fully self-initiated and i self published it online via a print on demand site, mainly just to print a copy myself.

a few fans contributed photos to the project (credit given in the book) and a handful of fans purchased the book as well; proceeds were fully donated to one world health, which is the charity needtobreathe supported at the time.

weird worlds

one reflects staying within our inner world and the other reflects exploring the world around us; both are important despite being opposing ideas. weird in both these paintings reflects diversity, differences, and authenticity. the works share a similar pattern that resembles an overview of earth and both share an intentionally odd selection of colours.

read about each below:

process for ‘great weird world’

for both, the process primarily went one colour at a time, little by little

“weird little world”

acrylic on wood
11x14 in

about the comfort we feel from staying within our weird little world

it’s okay to be selective, but i think it’s important to sometimes let people into our weird little worlds. to me, making and sharing any of my creative work has always been a way to do this in a way that feels natural.

the colour scheme for this is a bit all over the place, complex, and is kind of random (like nothing is connected or related). this is often reflective of what our internal worlds are like. we may have vast experiences throughout our lives and it can be hard to see how one thing connects to another.

the title was inspired by good will hunting and the quote “we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds.”

(process below)

“great weird world”

acrylic on canvas
38.5 x 23.5 in

about the power that’s in community

the odd selection of colours that don’t seem to ‘belong’ with the other colours… but yet. here they are, existing together… is some kinda symbolism for any diverse community.

salt water therapy

8x8 in
acrylic on canvas

and a little picture story about where the canvas came from. i had a less great week this summer so near the end of the week i went to manitou beach, sk for the day by myself. it wasn’t so much a fun beach day as much as it was a necessary day for my mental. right when i got there i took my paddleboard out into the middle of the lake, attached my ankle to the board, and then jumped off and sat in a water hammock in the middle of the lake for awhile

this, of course, made me feel a bit better… and so sometimes, i think, maybe we just need a good salt water float. manitou beach is good for this.

flashback friday: stephen kellogg and the sixers tour book

somewhere between finishing college and my last internship and getting my first design gig, i made a tour book for this band i loved purely for the joy of it (and maybe to practice my book design skills). they didn’t hire me for this but they were aware and cool with it.

i worked with a few fans i knew to submit photos and stories from each show and to help gather each setlist and i also asked the band for a favour (see the end page), and i had the books self-published to a print-on-demand site that fans could order a copy if they wanted to.

since it wasn’t official merch i didn’t really promote it—but any (little bit of) money i did make off of it i’m positive went right back to supporting the band anyway. ;)

ps. it’s fun to see how design styles, trends, and my skills (why did i put blue text on a black page????) have changed and improved over the years—but some aspects of design really are timeless, such as good type setting and typography.

stay uncool and one day you’ll be cool (personal project)

handmade visual journal
may to july ‘25

About this project:

Immediately out of college and before my first job as a designer, I designed a lot of ‘zine style photo books from some music travel adventures I went on. It was just a way for me to keep designing things and not forget everything I learned in school, build my portfolio with more work that I loved, while I was a barista as my day job and job searched but more than that it became something that made me really love to tell stories in a visual way.

Earlier this year I was itching to design something similar—and since I went to California near the end of last year to see Hanson (yes, those brothers) four times in a week, this trip felt like something that needed a physical memory of. I had done trips like this before but it had been YEARS and doing it again brought back a lot of memories and joy I once felt.

I started to make it on the computer in Adobe InDesign like I had done with the others but about a third of the way through it just didn’t feel right. So, I ordered and printed some of my photos and bought a ~letter-sized unlined sketchbook and decided to do it completely by hand: 60 pages of layout and stories and photos by hand. Each page was carefully curated and I wrote mini stories like a journal about each part of the trip.

I’m not sure what to even call this project. A visual journal? Handmade ‘zine? Travel journal? For me it’s just a memory to keep forever and the process was some kinda therapeutic activity that allowed a lot of reflection. Doing this was a way to unmask; to process a little more about who I am under this autistic mask (I’m learning that it’s a layered journey that takes years). In that, I learned a little more about what I want, what I love, and maybe that’s how we actually are cool.

All I know is that I can’t wait to look at it just before my life ends and hopefully think, “my life may not have been much, but I definitely did do what I loved whenever I could.” And to be honest, that’s the only thing I hope to think before I die.

The title means to stop chasing what someone else perceives as “cool” or “trendy.” Do what you want, like what you like, wear what you want to…. and stop making decisions based on what might “look” cool for social media. If you stay true to yourself, you’ll be the coolest even if the things you do and like aren’t seen as “cool” to someone else (like traveling to California to see Hanson four times). Who cares if anyone else sees it as cool or not? It made me happy. The end.

—

The name of this book is largely inspired by the movie Almost Famous and the ‘one day, you’ll be cool’ shirt I bought from Paper 8 in LA that week.

I’ll finish this off with a quote from Almost Famous, one of my favourite movies of all time:

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with one another when we’re uncool.”

tiny useless things

hand built ceramics, air dry clay
acrylics
acrylic seal/varnish

a little exploration i did to communicate a message about society, humanity, ableism, and self worth. the collection consists of tiny mugs you can’t drink out of, tiny vases of glued in (faux) flowers, and tiny buckets you can’t put water in.

all useless.

…

read the why behind the message and more about where this concept came from below.

being a designer i’ve always tried to find a purpose and function of anything i see or make—it’s just in our nature as designers (inventors and problem solvers). i’ve also struggled with the persistent very human thoughts of, “am i doing enough?” or “am i producing/creating enough?”

the older i get the more i realize that art (and life) is not always about having some profound purpose and impact all the time. we don’t always need to be “useful” either. sometimes just simply existing is okay; what and how much we produce isn’t tied to our value and worth.

these tiny useless mugs, vases, and buckets were made as symbolism of this and serve as a reminder whenever we see this tiny useless thing just… sitting or hanging somewhere.

spring film / may 2025

plants, flowers, time outside, and a trip to the zoo / pentax k1000

organize / design your life (ceramics)

hand built ceramics with air dry clay

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to go with my belief that design is everywhere and affects everything we do, this was a personal adventure to make ‘designated places’ for all my little things.

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phone bed:

because when the phone goes to bed, i’m unavailable.

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workspace:

a pen/pencil holder is necessary for any artist/designer. as simple as this is, i carefully made this to be exactly the size that i needed it to be… too tall, short, narrow, or wide all bring terrible usability.

the business card holder was nothing but a happy accident. it wasn’t built for any specific thing but ended up being the perfect shape to hold cards and so a ~place was born.

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accessories:

drawers and cabinets is where my things go to die (out of sight, out of mind…most ADHDers can relate). to keep things open concept but still clutter-free and somewhat organized, i made a bunch of various sizes of wavy bowls and trays to keep similar products together.

volunteer work: jr nationals weightlifting championships

in june 2025, i volunteered with my provincial weightlifting association to help with social media coverage and content for the jr nationals weightlifting championships, which was held locally.

for two of the three competition days, i took videos and photos of athletes, posted videos of many athletes on the main Instagram story, and designed in-feed content posts for the podium in each weight class for athletes to want to share (many did). many of my videos were also used for highlight lifts for reels.

i wasn’t the sole social media manager for this event, but i played a huge role in making the feed, stories, and DMs engaging and responsive during the event and for about the week after.

see below for some of the visuals i created from the event or check out the community Instagram page from the event.

maybe you just need the beach?

january 2025
air dry clay, canvas, acrylic, joint compound, and ~one million seashells)

just a fun adventure when i missed the ocean in the depths of winter

report to the community — a throwback project (2012) and one where i thought a little differently early in my career

dimensions when folded 7x10 in; poster dimensions 21x30 in

the report to the community was a project my department (central marketing and communications) did at usask every year that summarized some of the bigger news stories across campus from the past year used as a marketing piece to give out at campus and community events.

we usually did it like a typical brochure/booklet but this year when i worked on it i thought, “maybe we could make it into a poster?” books are nice if you have a place to put them but with stuff like this i think they often get tossed out once you read them.

the poster format was a way to maybe avoid having people toss it out after they read it; this way the hope was to have people want to hang it up in their office after reading it so they see it frequently without it being in the way and adding to the office/desk clutter. in a way, my colleagues and i thought this would maybe boost internal campus staff morale as well as keep us top of mind for external stakeholders.

we still wanted it to be able to fold and look like a booklet to make it easy and more traditional to handle so we used some of the slogan words one by one as a way to “introduce” the stories.

our six

In 2019 I was asked to participate in Spreadshow called “Our Six,” a local design show in Saskatoon. “We are all Treaty People” is a refrain for those inside Canadian Treaty boundaries.

Participants were asked to design a logo to explore and visually portray the aspects of living within Treaty 6 territory and the process work was also to be presented next to the final artwork as a visual juxtaposition.

This project was done on a volunteer/community basis and was delayed and then cancelled due to COVID-19. Even though this project never saw the light of day, I still enjoyed the process. The process was not as simple as it may seem and I brainstormed ideas casually and in my spare time while observing and getting to know Indigenous people and culture over a period of a few months.

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Initial sketches (slideshow):

skills demonstrated:

concept development and ideation, logo design, digital iIllustration, graphic design, art direction, visual storytelling

A sneak preview of the final design:

Digital concepts and sketches:

Right away, I knew I wanted to keep it simple and play with typography. I ended up with about three main concepts emerge from the early sketches.

The first idea was the misshapen six, the scrambled letters, or the letters with the line through them. This told the story of lostness. I had observed a bit of Indigenous culture around this time through friends and realized there was a lot of lost culture that most of us had no clue about.

The second idea I had was based on the quote by Dr. Gregory Cajete. In trying to illustrate the quote, some circles and half circles emerged.

The third idea was based on the definition of reconciliation (the restoration of friendly relations). Using some of the shapes from the second idea, I started to mess with shapes and letterforms and discovered that the U and I seemed to work as a bridge to join (or reconcile) the other letters together, which brought me to my final concept/design.

now that we’re old, stories will be told

18x24in, collage

when my friend asked me near the end of last year if anyone wanted a giant scrapbook she made from our hanson tour week in 2007, I immediately called dibs because, with some other things I had, it just sounded like an art project waiting to happen. i guess i took one scrapbook and curated it down a lot by finding the best parts—the parts that worked to tell some sort of more relatable wider fan story—and put it into something that can always be on display.

it kinda goes hand in hand with this project—but this one is more centred around the fan experience: the friendships, the jokes, the travel, the massive storage bank of memories and stories we collect, and so much more beyond the music when we go to shows, or multiple shows with friends we only know because of the music.

these shows, moments, and adventures? they change our lives.

fire inside (version one, two, and three)

version one

in the summer of 2024, i made this painting one day just for me. i didn’t spend a lot of time on it and i didn’t have a plan. i just started painting, adding one part at a time and a felt like i was led by the fire inside, which turned out to represent a feminist perspective. it felt a bit personal, so i held onto it.

version two

in december 2024, after discovering a song with a lyric that said “never seen a fire, like the one inside her, even when she’s tired, she could melt sierra snow, and make the golden rod grow” i felt like the song just went with the painting; both gave me the same feeling.

so i bought handwritten lyrics of the song from the artist and by the end of january the following year, i put the lyrics in a frame juxtaposed next to the canvas. moving without a plan like the first version with some sort of reckless abandon (like ripping the canvas off the original wood frame), i updated the original painting a bit and fixed some parts i didn’t love and wanted the new version to feel a bit more…powerful.

at that time i was exhausted, burnt out, had just been laid off for the third time since 2020… but still i felt ready for whatever. ready to (melt the canadian snow and) grow.

song is broken bow by john calvin abney

version three (and what i think is the final version)

in april 2025, i had just bought this small (about 11x14 in) wood frame from a thrift store and wasn’t sure what to do with it, but it felt like a good piece for a collage. the original canvas of it was some kind of paper glued flatly onto the frame (like something you’d find mass produced and at Home Sense or Target or something).

i noticed then that version two had less meaning than it did when i first made it—i still love the song but the art was ready for something new. so i took version two apart, found a new frame for the handwritten lyrics on their own, and started cutting up the canvas art just enough so that it fit onto this wood frame. i wasn’t concerned if it looked cut up and pieced together. that was the intention. i wanted it to look like some sort of process and rough mess because that’s what the fire inside usually looks like. i glued it down and then started adding things to the canvas in a similar way as i did in version one and with a reckless abandon like i did in version two—completely led by the fire inside.

i added cut outs of words from a random comic ‘zine i recently found in someone’s free mini library in their yard that ‘fit the story i wanted to tell,’ i added cut outs of flowers from construction paper that were the same shape as some ceramic necklaces i just made, added some more touches in paint, paint pen, oil pastels, pencil crayons, etc… and really just kept adding random things until i felt like version three could hold its own and tell a new story.

“i’ll let you be in my dreams if i can be in yours”

i had this small wooden box to do something with this winter and around the same time i saw a picture of the steps of the bob dylan museum in tulsa that had these lyrics on them. i liked it so i went and listened to the song (“talkin’ world war III blues”) it came from again and read the lyrics.

i realized it was similar to a thought i had lately and a little story i wrote (below) about how we connect—how a lot of times everyone just kinda wanders around in their own world, thinking about themselves and then often shows up in their dreams (or daydreams) alone and this is terrible. we’re all just out here on our own islands? sounds terrible, right? it really feels like we are becoming more and more disconnected these days despite having more tools to connect and connecting to chat gpt is easier than connecting to a real person? again, this sounds terrible and is probably why i refuse to use chat gpt in that way.

in short, i made this box out of an ink transfer of bob dylan and acrylic paint as a little reminder that i’m not here alone and that music, art, and life is about connecting/being in each other’s dreams.

first three months of an “awful quiet” winter on film / 2025

some favourites from one roll taken with a Pentax k1000

i love when i take three months to finish a film and when i get the photos developed i see photos i forgot i took :]

are you creating or are you just following instructions?

as i’m pet sitting right now at a friend’s house, i saw this spiral bowl (photos) i made once in a hand building pottery class a few years ago. it was my first hand building project i ever built, was a bit of a ~journey (anxiety, stress…some tears, you know, the usual), and the bowl is totally imperfect in all its glory.

i gifted it to a friend who appreciates it more than i do. personally, when i see it it brings back memories i don’t like. the project was someone else’s idea… i just followed their steps and used my hands to build their idea. since i’ve been exploring hand built ceramics more this year, naturally i got to reminiscing a bit and then wrote this essay in relation to the experience but also something i think is key when it comes to ‘creating’ anything.

following instructions may be a good way to learn but if you stick to the rules too closely you’re actually using a totally different part of your brain that isn’t creativity, and it won’t benefit you later on.

—mal

the hands

“activist” (2024)

i found this ceramic hand in a thrift store for a few dollars. it was definitely in rough shape and not a very nice colour—but it was making a fist and it had a hole going through it for something like a pencil, paintbrush…or maybe a flag?

so i bought it and gave it a fresh paint job to look like the inclusive pride flag with the black base, the multi coloured brown stripes, and rainbow dots.

“symbol of life” (2025)

for my birthday this year, a few friends and i went to wet paint pottery for a chill, creative night and i picked out this hand vase to paint.

maybe i have a thing for painting hands…?

anyway, i decided to paint this one to look like my own hand, ocean wave tattoo and all. i don’t typically wear red nail polish but i do like the colour red so i thought it was a suitable solution.

since i did this for my birthday, i decided the hand is a symbol of life—and another year of being alive for it.

today and tomorrow, music saves

18x24in

(mixed media/collage)

just years of concert tickets, autographed cd jackets, a few festival cruise ship key cards, and memories that will never fade packaged up neatly into some form of art

—

i had an extra 18x24 poster i used as the base and then arranged everything loosely and taped it together to form the collage. tape seemed less permanent than glue so i could adjust things if needed and since i knew it was going in a frame i wasn’t worried about it being overly secure.

then i made some letters… “today and tomorrow music saves” is a quote i had on a random tshirt years ago that i always liked. i don’t have that shirt anymore—so this was a good way to let it live on.

done ;)

southern california film / nov 2024

all photos taken with a Pentax k1000

i landed in san diego around noon. after grabbing lunch and doing a bit of work at a cafe near my airbnb, i changed into a swimsuit and found myself exploring ocean beach and the nearby streets solo for the afternoon til sunset.

there’s an unexplainable feeling i get on days like this—like standing underneath or on top of the pier and just watching the waves relentlessly come as surfers try to catch them. if they miss it, they might get the next, or the next. this is kinda like life, isn’t it?

remote work life feat. a view from my airbnb desk in san diego

a solo day at the san diego zoo

after checking out of my san diego airbnb, i had a couple hours to spare before my train to los angeles.

naturally, i wanted to go to the beach but since i had my (carry on) luggage with me, the scenic lookout point at sunset cliffs will suffice.

life in transit

(taken somewhere between san diego and los angeles via train)