During most weekdays I spend some portion of my day in video calls. I work remotely for my job and those calls are the way I attend meetings and have one-on-one check ins with the people I work with. I mention this mostly because, over the recent holidays, I spent a couple of days reorganizing my workroom here at home and one of the goals I had was finding better ways to find myself in a room that I spend a lot of paid time in but that beyond that is my room in our home.
In the video calls from my much more functional workroom, my coworkers can see this wall behind me as we talk.

This in-progress gallery wall represents aspects of me and self-assigned connections to me. A self portrait of sorts.

I have art made by me, art made by my partner Gayla, art by friends, and art by strangers that means something to me.
I have objects from various stages in my life many of which seem mundane but are charged with memory and meaning to me.
The wall is me as child and adult, as designer and artist, as collector and sentimentalist.
The wall is like a living version of one of those red-line TV evidence walls but, you know, without the murder. I could draw lines of connection between everything — a network of the nodes of me.

On this left side of the wall, the painting centre top is what I call my “birth painting”. It’s a surrealist landscape by Canadian painter, John Leonard. My Mom got this painting from him in 1969 when I was born and it has been near me ever since. I’m not sure if I ever met Leonard but over the almost 56 years I have lived with this painting, the spark of life he charged these flying fishing lures has always caused a reciprocal charge in me.
Below the painting, a framed very old print of blue jays that someone cut out of a book or a magazine. And in front of that an also very old flocked blue jay and a glass beaker with blue jay feathers connected from our land here. When we moved here, one of the first things I told Gayla after doing a drive out here from Toronto with a friend was that there were so many blue jays. We named this place “Blue Jay Haven” even while we were still renters.
The circular painting is mine from a small series I made for a group show where all of the artists worked on the same round birch panels. I made four imagined landscapes and then mounted a carved human form with their nervous system exposed.
Below right from that painting is one of the fifty collaborative pieces I made with my friend Aaron Leighton back in 2016–2018. More about those here.
The hand painted 49¢ sign is one of a few we purchased when the landmark discount store Honest Ed’s in Toronto closed down. They had sign painters on staff that were still making new signs for the store up until they closed. It was a magical place.

There are two small encaustic works by my partner Gayla Trail. One of her many creative practices is hot wax encaustic collage. I have several artworks by Gayla on this wall. Gayla is also connected to a number of the objects which only makes sense since we have been part of each other’s lives for almost 32 years now.
The “150 in One Electronic Project Kit” is a late 70’s Radio Shack product that I had as a kid and then repurchased as an adult. Not only is it a beautiful example of a certain style of science ephemera but it also exemplified the playful connection I had to science and computers at that time in my life. The kit was the perfect kind of directive and open-ended learning tool. I spent many hours with it mostly not following the instructions for the 150 sample projects but learning how to make one thing and then adapting that to experiment and make something else. In university, when I was most into industrial and noise music, I made the kit that’s on my wall into a light-controlled noise machine that I played live on the campus radio station.
I’m front of that kit are three things I’ll note…
- A small punch needle drawing by Gayla that I love.
- The geometry set tin that was scratched into by its original kid owner. It has their name and the the words, “Mine. Put it back!”
- There are two fishing net floats that came from my grandfather. I believe he got them in Greece and I have memories of them in my Grandparents’ apartment amongst his other collected nautical items.

Further along the wall, there is a handmade elephant mask we bought many years ago in a market in Oaxaca City, Mexico. I’ve always loved its sad also cartoon hobo-clown aspect.
Below that a crumbling painting by a friend Craig Marshall that once lived outside on the rooftop deck of the apartments where we all lived. I’ve always thought it had the feeling of a raw Willem de Kooning portrait but it’s mostly just a pull back to a specific time and place.
Above the portrait of a child at a lake was purchased by my late aunt. She said she saw it and felt it looked just like me as a child and it’s true I can see myself. The artist is Ken Kelly (who I know nothing about despite trying to research him) and the title “My Sun” is written on the back of the canvas.
Below that painting is another circular imagined landscape I made a bunch of years back.
And then a vintage kids xylophone that connects to the work I do at my day job designing digital toys but which I also simply find to be a beautiful object.

Here Jabba the Hut cradles his “court jester” Salacious B. Crumb while lounging in a silver-plated tray filled with various gathered beach stones. Sometimes the connections are layered and nuanced and other times it’s just me being silly which is a truthful portrait of who I can be.
Here there is also a detailed anatomical model of a cow’s digestive system that I found at a thrift store over thirty years ago. It’s one of the more divisive items visible in my work video calls but it is also quite beautiful in its way with hand painted coloured details and labelling.
There’s a postcard sized letterpress landscape I bought from a storefront printshop called Typique on Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam. The artist is René Treumann and he was in the shop printing at the time I stopped in years and year ago. Checking online it looks like the shop is still there with a line of the ubiquitous Dutch bicycles out front and a nice little cafe nearby.
I’ll end with two last things…
The front logo flap from a 70s box of Letraset. We still have many sheets of this now very brittle ancient commercial art transfer lettering downstairs in our basement studio space. I have used in my drawings occasionally but it’s mostly so fragile that it crumbles when used without the most delicate touch. But it reminds me of my first exposure to graphic design as a kid of 8 or 9 years old in the 70s visiting my Mom in the print shop she worked doing design work. I remember the clunky (but cutting edge for the time) typesetting computer, the machine which applied a thin layer of wax to paper printouts for paste-up, the sheets of razor cut rubylith masking film, and the aluminum printing plates wrapped around the print drum.
And finally, there’s a very very old junk shop purchased novelty eraser sitting on the back of a wooden toy truck. The half-foot slab of rubber is so old that it feels more like a piece of stone. It has the words, “I NEVER MAKE BIG MISTEAKS!” printed on it. It’s a treasured possession more so than if it were a slab of precious metal.
…
There is clearly much more on the wall and each object with its story that it can’t possibly tell in its own. The wall is my story or at least some parts of it. It is an active form of assemblage that isn’t meant as an artwork exactly but functions as one regardless. A bit Joseph Cornell, a bit Rauschenberg maybe… but mostly just me and my life before and with Gayla brought together on this wall with me as its primary audience.
I’m not overly materialistic but I do find resonance and attachment with and between objects. I’m not concerned with extrinsic value but more the personal, emotional, intrinsic value some things have for me.
Do you find yourself depicted or represented by objects or collections that you keep with you?