Recently, I hosted a pop-up event with three other Vancouver Design Nerds called Recipes for Connection. When we were dreaming it up, we were thinking about what we have to offer each other right now.

Something we felt drawn to was the idea of hyperlocal, neighbourly connections. By now, the statistics on loneliness have been documented internationally, and the fact that chronic loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of early death by up to 50%, an impact comparable to smoking cigarettes daily, is practically common knowledge.

In our own lives and in the arts, there’s increasing discourse around AI. Many artists, writers and creatives are making passionate pleas to protect their work and the humanity behind it. For me, it’s often come down to the question: if there are models that can be trained to do everything I can, but faster and at a higher volume, what am I doing? How do I want to spend my time? What is meaningful to me now? What are my contributions outside of a production-focused system?

We started thinking about the gaps that still AI leaves, the things shared between friends, neighbours, and generations that we could help emphasize or celebrate. The neighbourly contradictions that could become localized innovation.

We used recipes as a metaphor. Things tried and true, made to shine with lived experience, but still open to remixing and reinterpretation. We asked people to share recipes for love (for themselves, for family, for romantic partners). Recipes for courage: what do you do when you need to feel brave? Recipes for belonging. How does a place go from being a space to becoming a home?

Not surprisingly, a lot of the recipes ended up being about food. It reminded me of work I did with United Way documenting the Hi Neighbour project in Edmonds. The project aimed to cultivate community leadership and build skills in historically hard-to-reach communities, so people could continue stewarding their own community projects.

One of the most popular activities was a series of ongoing cooking classes. Edmonds is one of the most densely diverse areas in the region, with hundreds of languages spoken within just a few blocks and lots of newcomers finding their way into the community.

What always stuck with me was how many of the people leading the cooking demonstrations were people who felt really shy about their limited English. But that’s the beautiful thing about food. We all need it multiple times a day, and sometimes that’s enough motivation to show up and try. The cooking classes became cultural celebrations and shared meals, bringing together all kinds of neighbours.

At our event last, last Sunday, Rodrigo shared a recipe for Mexican hot chocolate, a memory of history, culture, and time spent with his grandpa. A Little Kitchen Academy joined us with a lentil soup that people could pre-assemble and take home to make. Yare’s Mexican Butchery shared some Mexican sweets.

We hosted this through the City of Vancouver’s placemaking grants. This was our second go, our first placemaking activation through the grant was two years ago in Leg-in-Boots Square for Grandparents Day.

The site at Fraser and 27th was much smaller, which worked really nicely. The inflatable mushrooms we made for the square two years ago kind of got swallowed up and disappeared. Here, the activation felt much more intimate.

There were a few things that didn’t quite work the first time. We made a mister to help people cool off, but the tiled plaza got a little slippery in places, which wasn’t ideal considering we were welcoming grandparents. We were also counting on more foot traffic from the seawall, but I think most people there were biking/running/power-walking somewhere else. Here, it felt like we ended up with quite a few leisurely locals curious enough to wander over and stay a while.

The biggest “L” was that a lot of people really struggled to connect the idea of mycelium and grandparents. We brought a mushroom theme to the activation, asking people to imagine how the forest hosts all these relationships, transforming the landscape and sharing important nutrients to help the whole system thrive. Even when the individuals are gone, the networks they’ve created are still in place.

This time, it was really nice, from an accessibility perspective, to have the concept of recipes for people to hold onto. Something concrete to help scaffold the sharing of knowledge about the more ephemeral ties in a community.

A dark horse in all of this was social media. The Vancouver Design Nerds Instagram is basically a ghost town for the rest of the year. With our 700-something followers and low engagement, I wasn’t expecting much. I made three reels of me and my friends putting up posters around the neighbourhood and talking about what we meant by “recipes,” plus two carousels describing the activation and calling for helping hands. And we met five of the coolest people.

Having extra help on the day of to help set up was a revelation. I always underestimate how much work activation are. I often spend twelve hours in a self-inflicted, intense hyper-vigilance, probably not eating or drinking any water, and then, no surprise, collapse in a puddle and spend the next three days reconstituting myself. But this time, I actually had some capacity to enjoy it because of the gift of people’s time.

When we were putting up the posters, I remember telling the other co-directors that it didn’t have to be good content. Just putting ourselves out there lets people get a sense of the vibe, and maybe show up and show up they did.

Because I wasn’t operating in a daze, I had the chance to chat more with some of the neighbourhood recipe contributors. One of my favourites was from a neighbour talking about his son and the special relationship he has with his twelve-year-old grandson, which he calls “indescribable”. His recipe was for courage: how to keep going in times when we don’t feel understood.

Another exchange nourished my soul came from a neighbour who contributed a “date bar” recipe, something he often enjoys during Ramadan. We ended up talking about his work as a musician and writer, and the impact of AI on that work, but also our shared hopefulness about the ways it might highlight our humanity and creativity.

Somehow, through a recipe, we got onto the intention of being. The powerful, but sometimes hard to remember, choices about where we put our attention, and when and where we make room for the divine or the unexpected to find us.

A friend initially didn’t think he had a recipe to share. Then he thought about how he cared for himself through a really dark time in his life, when he was facing a rare autoimmune disease.

He shared a granola recipe. Each of the seeds and ingredients felt like a daily decision to keep going. To keep faith in the dark brighter days are coming. Something that had once been his own way of getting through became something he could now share with someone else.

After a full day of these moving little recipes, the one I kept thinking about was one I never actually wrote down. A recipe for reconstitution.

What is this recipe about?

This is my go-to when I’m feeling low or just generally weird.

It’s especially effective when I’m in between projects, when I’ve just finished something and am waiting to welcome the next thing.

Like an actor taking a final bow and exiting the stage, my brain cells throw off their costumes and the shape they took on for the tasks. No longer the project manager, timekeeper, designer, contact, artist, it’s all dumped back into the same bucket again, ready to be poured into a new form.

Sometimes it’s a little daunting, having grown attached to the home this shape carved out. Sometimes it feels like being swept out into an ocean of possibilities, a warehouse of limbs where you can’t remember which ones are yours.

In the past, there’ve been cycles that felt like I’d lost my centre.

But like a shoe that’s fallen overboard and eventually gets found downstream, it always works out with a little time.

So, this is my ritual.

Ingredients

Three hours where you can put your phone somewhere, preferably at home. The more distance, the better.

HOT. Heat of any kind. My preference is a dry sauna.

Group dance. Any kind you’ve got is fine.

A pool.

Some kind of stretching. I use a foam roller.

Optional: cold plunge. A sweet treat.

Steps

1. Sign up for a class at your local community centre. I usually go for Zumba Tone. There’s something about prancing around a room to a cover of Despacito with the neighbourhood’s silver-haired grannies that reminds me life isn’t too serious. That you can just throw your body around with wild abandon for an hour.

2. Hit the sauna. Usually I’ve put leave-in conditioner in my hair to fight the chlorine, and sautéing for 15–30 minutes helps it get in there. Heat does something magical for my brain. The smell of cedar. It’s like a dimmer switch on racing thoughts I didn’t even realize were running in the background.

   
   It releases me into the present. This is where you see the elderly man in his felted sauna hat that looks like a bell, dancing by the door. Switching tunes from his cellphone in a Ziplock bag sitting on the ledge. You overhear three young men from the gym discussing the impacts of the matriarch and debating whether Catherine the Great ran a matriarchy. You catch the latest developments in a young man’s unlucky love life, along with advice from the woman here for aqua fit.

   
   Here we bare our scars. Tattoos of Christ across a back. A faded winged serpent on a withered arm. Sweat running from tufts of curry-black back hair and trickling onto an array of keys, pendants and amulets. “The Key to Heaven,” one man points at his chest to explain.

3. Then swim some laps. I love the rush of the bubbly, watery underworld. Soaring beneath the waves, I like to touch the bottom, imagining the orcas and whales I’ve seen in the Salish Sea. I usually do 24 laps. That’s the number I used to do when I was lifeguarding, and I like the rhythm of it. Counting them two by two, flying faster and faster until I’ve run out of breath. It’s important to me to set goals and prove to myself that I can do hard things. That I can keep promises to myself. Plus it’s nice to just use up all your energy. I remember a Zumba teacher once saying, “Use it all today. Don’t save it for home.”

   
   Sometimes I’ve gone into this process carrying stressful thoughts or things that are haunting me, conflicts at work, things between people, whatever it is. Swimming doesn’t make them disappear. It just lets me leave without being completely engulfed by them.

4. If there’s a cold plunge, I’ll probably do the sauna again and dip in the cold. It’s different for everybody, so listen to your body. For me, moving between hot and cold can create this euphoric release, tingling all over my body. Or maybe it’s just the early onset of hypothermia. Again, listen to your body.

5. After a hot shower, I go home, light some candles in a dim room and lie down on my foam roller.

And eventually, I feel ready again to move forward, shifting the weight of this seasons gifts and pains in ways I can carry. Free my hands for the next thing around the corner.

I think part of why I’ve had a hard time coming back to writing here is that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the kind of work I want to be doing, and what collaboration actually means to me.

I’ve done a lot of community-engaged work over the last couple of years. I’ve love bringing people together, asking questions, making things, and figuring out how a bunch of different ideas can become something shared.

But there have also been really hard parts of this journey.

There have been projects where I took on way too much, gave away more of myself than what is sustainable for me. Where “working together” didn’t necessarily mean that the work, responsibility, or decision-making was actually shared.

I didn’t want to come back here with a tidy reflection about how wonderful collaboration is, because that hasn’t actually been my experience.

Some days it’s really hard. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about why I’m doing this, what would make it sustainable for me, and maybe how I can be part of an ecosystem that also supports and nurtures other organizers. How could we create ways for everyday people to share what they know, what they care about, and what they’ve experienced, without extracting it from them?

And then, hopefully, how can that sharing encourage nurturing something together? I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I have three different offerings coming up that touch on that question in their own ways.

🍲 Tomorrow: Recipe for Connection

Tomorrow, I’ll be hosting an activation Recipe for Connection at Fraser & 27th Plaza with some friends from Vancouver Design Nerds.

We’re inviting people to share food, recipes, traditions, stories, and the things that connect us. You might have a recipe your family makes all the time. Maybe there’s a food that reminds you of home. Maybe you have a ritual that you didn’t realize was meaningful until someone asked you about it. These everyday things carry so much knowledge and memory. So if you’re around tomorrow, come by! I’d love to see some familiar faces.

Recipe for Connection
📍 Fraser & 27th Plaza
📅 September 19
Event details + registration

💬 September 24: Third Space

Then next week, I’ll be part of the Third Space September Gathering, where, along with Carol and Emily, I’ll be sharing some of what I learned from the Grandview-Woodland Community Mural Project.

We had more than 70 community conversations and collected over 145 visual responses to turn into one giant mural. People shared memories, hopes, neighbourhood stories, ideas about what they wanted their community to feel like.

Of course the process of actually making something collectively was much messier than the final mural makes it look. There were a lot of hard won lessons about facilitation, logistics, responsibility, power, and what it really means to make space for other people’s ideas I hope to share.

Third Space September Gathering
📅 September 24
Event details + registration

✂️ October 3: Paper Goods Fest

And then on October 3, I’ll be part of Paper Goods Fest with the artist collective I’m a part of, happenstance.

This one is a little different. No giant murals. No 200-person painting days. No trying to figure out how to turn 145 pieces of community input into one cohesive design. Just paper.

Paper Goods Fest is a celebration of paper-based art and independent makers, and I’m excited to have a space to make and share things in a smaller, more tactile way.

Paper Goods Fest
📅 October 3
Event details + registration

Anyway, hi again.

And if you’re in Vancouver, hopefully I’ll see you at one of these things soon.

The first workshops are happening June 5 + 6, and they’ll involve storytelling, mapping, drawing, conversation, collage, memory, and collective imagination, thinking about the places that help us feel a sense of belonging and the moments that create a yearning for connection in and around the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood.

You absolutely do not need to consider yourself “an artist” to participate. A lot of this project is about noticing, remembering, listening, reflecting, and sharing experiences of place.

Workshop details + registration:
https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/community-mural-painting-4821474?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=odclsxcollection&utm-source=cp&aff=odclsxcollection

We’ll also be hosting:

• a Community Living Room installation on June 13

• and a community mural painting day on July 11

This project bloomed from of something I started a last year called Emotion Cartography. Back then it was pretty scrappy and experimental. I was mostly organizing and facilitating the workshops on my own, even though I was lucky to have support from PosAbilities who gave me space to try it in the first place. A lot of the project was also held together by friends helping document workshops, put up posters around the neighbourhood, move tables, carry materials, and spread the word.

At the time I was hosting monthly workshops at Slice of Life, and one of my favourite parts was how afterwards I would keep running into people I had met through the sessions while postering around the Drive. It shifted the way I experienced the neighbourhood, from drifting through to more of a sense of rootedness. The project became less about a single cohort and more about fertilizing this feeling of connection, memory and place.

This summer is a continuation of that energy, but with some new collaborators!

It’s still messy, figuring out how to collaborate across text messages, WhatsApp, Discord, meetings squeezed between work schedules, different communication styles, strengths, capacities, and availability. All of us are still doing this off the side of our desks and it’s been so meaningful to see this idea resonated enough that other people wanted to help carry it forward.

Carol and Emily, who were both involved in the earlier Emotion Cartography workshops, have been putting so much care, labour, and thought into helping shape what is now becoming the Grandview-Woodland Community Mural project. We’ve formed a new collective for this project called Community Marks. We’ve also been joined by Dawson, a community enthusiast from the neighbourhood and Serena a new friend we met specializing in participatory research methodologies.

This will be the first time I’m creating a semi-permanent public artwork of this size in the city and I keep pinching myself once in a while to make sure its real.

I’ll share more soon as things continue unfolding <3

One of my favourite things about working with young visitors at the Burnaby Art Gallery is that in moments that feel like I’m racing to hit all the key points in the program, more often than not, someone says something that lingers with me for days.

Growing up in Canada as an immigrant, I’ve always had this foggy knowing that I come from a big extended family. Like the reunion t-shirts, fill 3 buses kind. My mom is one of ten and my dad one of four, but those extended intergenerational connections have existed more in my mind rather than as a lived experience. Maybe that’s why I feel a kind of longing for more “third spaces” where different generations can spend time together in meaningful ways. When my parents worked at a senior care home in Chinatown for Chinese-speaking elders, I used to go to a summer camp there. The kids, usually other children of staff, would spend the day moving between camp activities with the seniors, some programming reflected our cultural heritage. Looking back, it feels quite special, and not something I see very often now.

This week, I guided two Grade 4 classes through Assembly, an exhibition by Bobbie Burgers at the Burnaby Art Gallery, and it reminded me again of gifts children bring and the generosity they have in sharing their perspectives. We spent some time with the biggest work just noticing what stood out to us and what it reminded us of. Something that came up in both groups was that the large paintings were “good,” but the collage works were “amazing,” because of the layering, the repetition, and the way things were “remixed”. There was something about that accumulation that really landed for them.

When we went into the second room to see the sculptural works, after a round of collective gasps, one child reverently said, “It looks like she took all the leftover pieces and made a masterpiece,” and that’s been sitting with me ever since. It reminded me why I personally love collage. There’s something about cutting, arranging, and reworking pieces that enables a really focused, almost hypnotic state. I stop thinking so much about whether something is good or not, and instead just respond to what’s in front of me.

In neuroscience, there’s a concept called Transient hypofrontality, which describes a temporary reduction in activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, self-monitoring, and critique.

It’s the part that asks:

• Is this good enough?

• Am I doing this right?

• How does this look to others?

When that part quiets, even briefly, something else becomes possible:

• attention deepens

• self-consciousness softens

• we become immersed

This is usually linked to what we call a flow state. For me collage seems to invite that pretty naturally. You’re not starting from a blank page, you’re working with existing fragments, and the decisions are small and low-stakes. It shifts the process from trying to come up with something to simply noticing and responding.

Being in the exhibition also brought me back to some of the themes in Burgers’ work around cycles and change. With the cherry blossoms starting to come to an end, there’s already that awareness that what feels vibrant now is also temporary. Burgers has talked about being interested in the moment when flowers are no longer considered fresh or beautiful, when they begin to wilt and decay, and how that’s also a moment of transformation. Her process reflects that, with marks, prints, and fragments being continuously reworked and recombined into new forms.

I also talked a bit with the students about how she’s been working with floral imagery for over twenty years, and I asked them what they might want to explore for that long. Right now that’s double their lifetime and it was sweet seeing the cogs turn behind their eyes to consider. We looked for clues in the gallery about her process, her brushes, some of which are even tucked in the sculptural works, and the collage area where visitors can try assembling materials themselves. There’s something generous about being able to see not just the finished pieces, but the way they come together.

I keep coming back to that idea of leftovers becoming a masterpiece. It feels connected not just to collage, but to how we make meaning more generally. We’re often working with fragments, of memory, of experience, of things that didn’t quite resolve, and somehow, through attention and time, something splendid can still emerge.

Anyways I hope you find some time this week to see the beautiful masterpieces that you can make from the leftovers in the day. If you’re curious to experience it yourself, Assembly is on view at the Burnaby Art Gallery until April 19.

There was an art teacher, Miss Crescenzo, who made a big impact on my life. In my memory, she is always kind and supportive. She was one of the first adults I remembered who took a genuine interest in my art, who held it up as something that mattered. It was one of the first places I felt like I belonged without needing to find the right words.

Whether it was glue strips, plaster masks, or rolling paint with marbles, it was a place where I came alive. My safe space. And she helped me begin creating that sense of safety inside myself, especially when the world outside often felt confusing, critical, and harsh.

I didn’t really stand out academically or on the sports field. But having an adult take a sincere interest in my inner world was like a slow trickle that eventually carved the path of self-trust that I rely on everyday.

So often, especially when we’re young, we look to those around us and ask: Am I enough? Am I going to be okay? These moments often go unnoticed, especially for teachers who meet so many students, but their impact can truly be lifelong. It was with this in mind that, two years ago, I joined the AIRS artist residency program which pairs working artists with inner-city schools to reclaim under-utilized spaces and create meaningful moments for young people.

Earlier this March, I wrapped up my residency at Bruce Graham Elementary: six weeks with three cohorts of grade 3–4 students. Each month, I created a different version of my “data collectors,” focusing on a different sense.

Some days took everything I had. We were in an open space where other classes passed through and it was difficult to maintain the intention of each session. Every classroom has its own culture, and in this one, I really struggled at times to balance engagement with classroom management. Later, I learned that some classes had more students needing additional support, which helped me understand the dynamics, but it was still really challenging.

And yet, there were bright sparks.

In week two, we combined photography with contour line drawing to map landforms. When I turned off the lights, a focused hush fell over the room. It made me wonder how more intentional sensory environments, or structured body breaks, might support their learning.

The days we spent outside were also helpful. Students could move their bodies, but it was still difficult to keep everyone engaged. At a certain point, I had to make peace with the fact that they might not engage in the ways I had hoped.

There were also moments that I will always treasure.

A bubblegum-pink “alien island,” layered with textures.
A student who chose to keep building roads instead of joining a game of tag.
Laney’s flying submarine for two, with a mustache.
Henry’s “shell car,” powered by crushed shells.

Small glimpses of imagination, focus, and care.

A big hope for this residency was to help students build emotional literacy, recognizing and naming their feelings and to begin thinking about “data”: how we collect it, map it, and use it to understand our experiences. But honestly, I left feeling like we fell a bit short of that.

In my previous residency at Lord Nelson Elementary, the work felt more thoughtful and engaged. This was my second year, so I expected it to go more smoothly. I think part of the difference was that I changed the structure, removing movement-based reflection and body tracing due to time and space constraints. In hindsight, that may have created a barrier. There were also disruptions, like a shortened session due to photo day, that threw off the story synthesis I had planned.

Still, on our final day, students began asking me quietly if it was our last session.
They gave me hugs throughout the day. One student came by during a washroom break from her class, a bit teary-eyed, to tell me how much she would miss making art together. I had been so focused on whether we “ended strong” that I almost missed what mattered most.

There was one student, let’s call her Laurie, who responded deeply to the residency. In the second week, when I shared Chinese calligraphy as a way of thinking about abstraction (the way pictographs emerge from observing the natural world) she raised her hand and shared that someone in her family practiced this kind of writing. Later, another student chimed in that he and Laurie were from the same continent, “Asia,” he said proudly, expecting him to say “North America”, it made me smile at the time.

Over the weeks, Laurie kept returning to this thread, mentioning that she was born in Taiwan and weaving it into her work. It felt like a part of herself she was trying to understand.

On the final day, she gave me multiple hugs and asked to take a photo together. At one point, I overheard her friend gently reassuring her that she could still see me until the end of the day. It pulled at something in me, an echo of all the goodbyes I hadn’t been quite ready for.

During our group storytelling activity, frustrated with her group’s lack of focus, she chose to work on her own. Like the week before, she carefully read through her entire data collector to me.

And then, just before we said goodbye, she raised her hand one more time:

“Where are you from again?”

I had shared earlier that when I moved from Hong Kong when I was young, that art became a way for me to process and make sense of the different worlds I inhabit, especially the inner landscapes that aren’t immediately visible to others.

It made me wonder what she was seeing in herself.
What she was trying to name.
What she recognized in me.

It brought me back to something I encountered during AIRS a while back: The Circle of Courage. At its core, it names four essential needs for young people to thrive:

Belonging: I am loved.
Mastery: I can succeed.
Independence: I have power to make decisions.
Generosity: I have a purpose.

These ideas aren’t new. Many Indigenous cultures have long understood children as sacred beings, worthy of dignity, care, and deep respect. Reading this, it felt like something we all know, somewhere deep down.

This residency reminded me how important it is for young people (and people of all ages really) to have mentors, different people, at different moments who can meet them where they are. People who can see them and reflect something back. Hold space for them to test, try, and feel their way into who they are becoming.

It also reminded me of how others have generously poured into me, so that I have something to give to this next generation. How humbling it is to be even a small part of someone’s journey. To help create a sense of belonging. And maybe be a Miss Crescenzo in someone else’s story.

Not just directions, but how design can help people feel confident enough to explore something unfamiliar, a new building, a creative practice, or even a neighbourhood they thought they already knew.

This year I found myself designing a festival map, but what I was really after was a feeling of orientation.

Every year around this time, Burnaby Heights quietly fills with art.

Poetry readings, workshops, installations in shop windows, performances, little bubbles of creativity popping up across libraries, community centres, cafes, and galleries. It’s all part of StrideFest, a neighbourhood arts festival powered largely by volunteers and people who care deeply about sharing their creative passions.

This is my second year helping with the festival’s communications, pitching in to design posters, maps, and signage that help people discover what’s happening.

What started last year as a simple brochure has slowly grown into a fold-out map, outreach posters, and exhibition signage across different venues.

Along the way, I’ve been thinking a lot about accessibility, design, and the strange balancing act of making something welcoming without making it feel childish.

Designing Something Friendly (But Not Infantilizing)

One design tension I keep running into is this:

How do you make something accessible and friendly without making it look like it’s only meant for children at first glance? Bright colours, clear language, and visual cues can help people quickly understand information. But if something looks too playful or overly simplified, adults sometimes assume it’s not meant for them.

StrideFest attracts a wide range of people:

• artists and performers
• families
• seniors
• neighbours wandering in out of curiosity
• people who may not normally attend arts events

The design has to say “you’re welcome here” without accidentally saying “this is only for kids.” Sometimes that means small signals, like clearly indicating when a workshop is family-friendly, or when children need to be accompanied by an adult. Those tiny cues can make a big difference in whether someone feels comfortable showing up.

Designing for Orientation

A big influence on this year’s festival map actually came from my work with Curiko, where we learned how much visual context can reduce anxiety for participants.

When people are navigating unfamiliar places, especially across language or literacy differences, images can do a lot of work that text alone can’t. Instead of relying only on descriptions, the map includes real photos of venues and locations.

The idea is that someone might glance at the map and think:

“Oh, I know that building.”

That tiny moment of recognition can make navigating a festival feel much less intimidating! Good way-finding isn’t just about directions, it’s about helping people feel confident enough to explore.

The Quiet Power of Volunteering

This year also happens to be the International Year of Volunteers, which feels fitting because StrideFest is really powered by people giving their time and energy to something they care about. If you’re curious about the broader movement, you can read more here.

Volunteering for this festival has been meaningful for me in surprising ways over the years. It’s allowed me to grow practically, learning more about what it actually takes to organize a festival, coordinate printing, distribute materials, and support artists across multiple venues. But the deeper part has really been the mentorship and the relationships that grow around the work.

One of the festival co-chairs, Yunuen, is actually the person who introduced me to the AIRS residency opportunity last year. That kind of connection is something I’ve come to appreciate about community projects, you never quite know where things might lead or who you might meet along the way.

Even though I’ve created communications materials for many nonprofits over the years, contributing to StrideFest as a volunteer feels different. There’s something freeing about working on something you believe in without the usual layers of approvals and iterations that often come with client work.

Within the festival’s colours and shapes, I’ve had a lot of space to experiment with ways to highlight parts of Burnaby that make me look up with a sense of wonder. Like Paul Wong’s spiralling vortex on the face of the Deer Lake Gallery, created by pointing a live camera back onto a video screen, generating a feedback loop that produces those hypnotic spirals. It’s something Grant (the other festival co-chair) has been passionately exploring in his work over the past few years. Or the piece of history Helen, the “Swinging Girl” carries in the Heights. She’s been lovingly restored and is still looked after by the community today, the Heights Merchants Association pays her monthly electricity bills and keeps an eye on her, while the City of Burnaby handles maintenance when needed.

Practicing Imperfection

One of the unexpected lessons this year has been learning how to make mistakes in spaces that actually allow for mistakes.

While laying out the festival map, I accidentally placed the wrong photo for one of the exhibition locations (can you spot it in the map?). I had used an image while blocking out the layout of the spaces, and somehow the placeholder stayed. Unfortunately, I only noticed after we had already sent approval to print 500 copies.

In the past, something like that would have filled me with dread. I could already hear the inner critic: Why didn’t you look more carefully? What is this, amateur hour? The whole point was to make this more accessible, not send people to the wrong place.

Perfectionism has been one of the ways I’ve tried to keep myself safe for most of my life. When mistakes happened in other environments, the response often felt less like learning and more like a kind of corporate humiliation ritual disguised as “feedback.”

But here?

It just became a dad joke.

A small design oopsie that we could laugh about and move forward from.

And honestly, it felt low-key healing.

This community been a space for me to try things, work on this project in the odd hours around my other commitments, and occasionally get something wrong without it becoming a referendum on my worth. I’ve been realizing how rare spaces like that can be, places where people can experiment, learn, and grow without fear. Places where we are free to do our best work and maybe even show up a little closer to our truest selves.

It’s something I want to practice more for myself, and hopefully offer to others too.

An Invitation

If you’re in Burnaby during StrideFest and want to be part of the festival, there are still opportunities to volunteer. Even one extra person supporting a workshop or performance can make a big difference for the performers and artists.

Sign up here if you’re curious:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0448A9AF2DA2F9C34-62841026-stridefest

Finding Our Way

Maybe that’s part of what good design can do. Not just make things look nice, but help people find their way, through a building, through a neighbourhood, or into a creative experience they might not have otherwise tried.

A poster.
A map.
A workshop someone was nervous to sign up for.

Sometimes accessibility is simply about lowering the threshold so someone can say, “Oh… I think I can go to that.”

And sometimes volunteering is similar, creating small conditions where connection, creativity, and community can blossom.

Lately I’ve been really struggling with context switching. I’m so grateful for all the things I get to be a part of, teaching, facilitating, comms work, being an artist-in-residence, but it’s starting to feel spinning plates in the air crashing down one by one.

I love everything I get to be a part of individually, but lately I’ve been getting sick, forgetting things, and slogging through the weeks, trying to make good on the promises a much more energetic version of me wrote the cheques for.

Like last week: I showed up to an interview expecting my natural exuberance for community to take over, only to have slept through my morning alarm and missed half the class I was supposed to teach at the gallery and showing up super frazzled. I’m usually friendly and confident in interviews, especially in community-engaged spaces, yet on that day I felt like the understudy shoved into the spotlight.

A couple Sundays ago, a quiet moment by Deer Lake inspired this poem. I’m sharing it in case it resonates with anyone else who’s juggling a lot, trying to figure things out or just needs a reminder that it’s okay let things fall apart a little, and keep evolving.

Does the beauty of this world
ever leave you undone?

There are days like this,
turning a corner,
light rolling over moving fog
at just the right angle,
and it unravels me.

A spiraling crescendo of weight,
the weight of living:
what is the right answer?
Am I doing enough?

Beauty arrests me,
as demanding as an aria
echoing in the ribs of a cathedral,
vibrating through my bones.

There’s a stillness where I am me and eternal all at once.

I think of the rolling mist
flowing through lifetimes,
through countless living beings.
I feel the crunch of dirt beneath me
Countless grains that have had millions of forms.
The trees stretch overhead,
they will still stand
when I am long gone.
This life is but a blip,
a passing mist
rolling over what has existed
since the beginning.

It reminds me of Eternal Sunshine,
ocean tides crashing into
a house of memories.

In the expanse of this beauty,
I remember:
I can do that too.

The things I’ve been running from
stop and let them break my heart,
crash into my spirit,
carve me out,
and let what shivers to the surface
begin again.

A rhythm returns,
my heart-song.
Slowly, on shaking legs,
I remember the steps
of a dance
that has always waited
for me to come home

Marika’s first solo exhibition is heavy with the depth of a lifetime. Her practice is rooted in the Nuu-chah-nulth worldview, layered with carving, stencil, photography, and working through woodblock printing. Raised in a family of carvers, drawing from over fifteen years of studying Nuu-chah-nulth ancestral belongings, her visual language feels ancestral and immediate at once. Arcing waves, wolves, birds in flight, open skies, everything pulls you into a dreamscape where the human and the sacred are inseparable. The work doesn’t promise comfort. It offers a reminder that grief and beauty, struggle and love, vulnerability and strength are not opposites. They belong together. Beyond the gallery walls, Marika has worked on repatriation efforts, bringing ancestral objects home from museums across Canada, the U.S., and the UK.

There are three new works made specifically for this show. The first, A Circle Strong Enough to Carry Both Sides (woodblock print and acrylic on cotton curtain), is a meditation on duality:

It is the inevitable experience of life that we encounter a balance of both joy and pain… all things carry both the “good” and the “not good”… In our state of becoming, we strive for the humility and awareness to see both sides in ourselves and others. As we walk our path in this life we work to become strong enough to carry both sides in all things.

The other two pieces, Surrender and Embraced in Interdependence, continue this invitation, not toward ease, but toward capacity. They reminded me of something I had recently learned: the “tend and befriend” theory.

A few days before the opening, I read about this idea proposed by psychologist Shelley E. Taylor. Beyond fight or flight, it suggests that under stress humans often respond by tending, caring for the vulnerable and befriending, seeking connection, support, and cooperation. Staying close, protecting one another, forming alliances. Survival isn’t solo. It’s relational. From a scientific perspective, tend and befriend is supported by the brain and hormonal systems in ways distinct from fight-or-flight. Oxytocin, the so-called “bonding hormone,” promotes trust, empathy, and calming, while dampening fear responses. It interacts with estrogen, which is one reason early research emphasized women, though the response exists across all genders. The parasympathetic nervous system is more involved, supporting regulation rather than mobilization for combat or escape. Evolutionarily, especially for caregivers in early human societies, fighting or fleeing wasn’t always possible. Survival depended on tending offspring, protecting the vulnerable, and forming cooperative networks.

And that is exactly what Marika’s work and her process embodies. Bonding isn’t secondary; it’s central. The act of creating this exhibition, stewarding ancestral teachings, of holding space for others, is a form of tending. The circle itself is an invitation to befriend.

Like wolves who place the young and vulnerable at the centre, like plants and insects leaning into mutual dependence, like birds migrating in collective intelligence, none of it survives alone. Embraced in Interdependence names the labour of connection: accountability, discomfort, reciprocity, care.

During the opening, we were also invited to make a personal print from Marika’s design created to reflect on the gifts each visitor has and what might their responsibility be to best use our time, talents and resources.

Walking through the gallery, I thought about the corners of my own life. Where is my role to help keep the wolf cubs safe? How do I tend the vulnerable parts of myself?
I thought about the gifts and the things that nourish me, like getting to be a gallery instructor here, continuing to tour students through this exhibition, helping them hold space for what they notice, respond through art-making, and discuss their experiences with each other. Witnessing young people as they notice what is alive in them, and how it resonates with the work on the walls.

There is also an audio piece in the exhibition, a collaboration with Ruby Singh, that includes a prayer from Marika’s grandmother, layered with the sounds of the lands that inspire her. In the gallery, it feels alive, breathing around you.

It’s been weeks, and I’m still thinking about the exhibition, about tend and befriend, about the ways we can belong to one another even in chaotic, technological, fractured lives. This is the work I want to pour my love into now.

So I’m left with a question I return to again and again: What would it look like to build circles, in our relationships, our communities, our creative practices, that are strong enough to carry both sides? Who do we place at the centre? And how do we let ourselves be held, too?

A Circle Strong Enough to Carry Both Sides is on view at the Burnaby Art Gallery until January 25.

Over the last year, I’ve been working on a series inspired by Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in collaboration with Dabria from twentytwo decor. Each piece starts with one of her handmade concrete vessels, and I paint them with symbols and fragments of myth meeting pieces of my own memory.

Together we’ve been asking how the “wild woman” shows up in our lives today. She’s the part that’s instinctive, creative, and unbound. The part that gets buried under expectations but always finds her way back through story, art, or a sudden spark of recognition.

When I reread The Red Shoes, I couldn’t stop thinking about my great-grandmother. I only know her from a single black-and-white photo that sits in my grandma’s apartment. She’s sitting upright in traditional Chinese clothing serious and composed. My grandma once told mom her had bound feet, yet she was still able to push her small frame up the stairs with the basket to do her own laundry.

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Estés tells The Red Shoes as a story about a woman’s creative and inner world, and what happens when that life is lost or replaced by something outside of her. In the tale, a poor orphan girl makes herself a pair of red shoes. They’re rough and handmade, but they come straight from her joy, from her wild, original spirit. When she’s adopted by a wealthy woman, she begins to forget where she came from. Later, she becomes obsessed with a pair of glossy, store-bought red shoes fit for royalty that everyone admires. When she puts them on, they eventually take control, forcing her to dance endlessly, unable to stop.

Estés sees this as what happens when a woman’s vitality gets captured by a culture that prizes perfection, appearance, and approval over authenticity. The endless dance becomes a cycle of craving and disconnection, a loss of rhythm with the soul. Healing comes from returning to the handmade, to the imperfect, to the things born from one’s own hands and heart.

As I read, I kept thinking about my great-grandmother’s feet. The idea of shaping a body for beauty, for survival, for belonging, is not so different from the story of the red shoes. Foot binding began in China over a thousand years ago, some historians believe first among dancers and court women whose small, crescent-shaped feet were seen as elegant and erotic. Over time, it spread through nearly every class. Girls as young as five had their feet broken and tightly bound to stop them from growing. The “golden lotus” was the ideal, three inches long, a mark of grace and status, though it came with lifelong pain and disability.

I’ve heard stories about mothers who couldn’t bear to stay in the room while their daughters cried through the binding. I wonder what my great-grandma thought, did she believe it would make her life better? Was her determination to do things for herself in defiance of the cultures that have shaped her? My grandma used to say her mother came from a wealthy family before “marrying into poverty.” Maybe the binding was meant to protect her, or maybe it was just the way things were done.

When I picture her now, I see those tiny shoes like the cursed red ones, beautiful and cruel. Both stories carry a similar truth: that women’s movement, both physical and spiritual, has often been shaped by the expectations of their time. Yet beneath all that, there’s a pulse that refuses to stop. A rhythm that remembers what it means to be alive.

I wonder what my great grand mother would think of me now, with my unbound size 8.5 feet walking through grass, kicking in the ocean, and wearing Crocs to galleries that make them look even bigger. Would she be proud of all the modern women who can not only run up the stairs but also vote, work, use our voices to advocate for women’s issues?

This vessel for The Red Shoes is one of Dabria’s. I painted flowing white forms that follow the ways we bend ourselves to fit into expectation, and red lines that trace the heartbeat that keeps moving underneath it all. As I painted, I imagined my great-grandmother’s spirit free again, her dance restored.

Today, July 17th (5:00–8:30pm) and again on Sunday, August 24th (12:30–4:30pm), I’ll be inviting folks into a new experiment — a practice of deep listening and sonic mapping as part of Parkway Alive — a summer-long pilot project reimagining sections of the BC Parkway as spaces to gather, play, rest, and explore. I’ll be set up near Metrotown — entrance off Central Blvd, with McKay Avenue as the closest cross street — and if you’re nearby, I’d love for you to drop in and join me.

The seed for this activation started bubbling during a chat with artist Ross Birdwise earlier this year. Ross works at posAbilities' Alternative Creations Studio, the same space where I was running my Emotion Cartography cohort. While the weekly “data collectors” I designed had a sound component, I found myself wishing I had more language to help people deepen their connection to what they were hearing. Lucky for me, Ross — who draws from a rich background in throat singing, experimental music production, and even lending his voice to metal horror projects — shared the ways he’s been working with artists he supports at the studio to interpret sound through visual language — facilitating the creation of “sonic scores”: abstract drawings full of gesture, texture, volume cues, colour, and symbolic representation. Then, using his voice and a loop station, he interprets those drawings as layered soundscapes. He even showed me some pieces by another composer inspired by spring warblers, where each note rose and fell like tiny wings darting through the air.

That conversation really stuck with me. It made me want to pay closer attention to the ways sound impacts my inner landscapes. And then, while I was in the Yukon earlier this month, it hit me again — how the twinkling of thousands of willow leaves delighted my spirit, how the movement of wind through the trees became a kind of visible sound. The canopy became a soft percussion section, dancing with birdsong. As a tried to move my brushes to capture the sound, it touched places in me I didn’t know needed touching — calmed my nervous system, soothed something in my chest.

Composer and sound pioneer Pauline Oliveros wrote about this kind of noticing as Deep Listening — a practice she described as “a life-long practice… the key to multi-level existence.” She understood listening as something expansive: not just tuning into external sounds, but opening to thought, memory, sensation. “Deep Listening,” she said, “takes us below the surface of our consciousness and helps to change or dissolve limiting boundaries.” It’s about shifting our attention in a way that allows for presence. For connection. For feeling.

That really struck me.

Because sound is always there — but so often, we tune it out. Or it overwhelms us. Or we just move through it, distracted. Deep Listening is about staying with it. Expanding our perception. Noticing the shifts in tone and texture. Feeling how vibrations register not just in our ears, but in our chest, our shoulders, our imagination. And seeing what emerges when we offer that kind of attention to ourselves and our surroundings.

In many ways, Parkway Alive feels like a form of collective listening — a citywide pause to consider what this space could become when we treat it not just as a corridor to pass through, but as a place for the “community’s needs and aspirations”. The BC Parkway is a 26-kilometre multi-use path that runs alongside the Expo SkyTrain Line, connecting Vancouver to Surrey. This particular stretch, from Boundary Road to Royal Oak, is currently being studied through the BC Parkway Framework Plan — which included two rounds of community consultation in 2024 to better hear how the space could reflect the dreams of the people who use it. Check out more about the process on the Your Voice page.

So I’m bringing this inquiry — this practice — back to the city. To this in-between space where the hum of traffic mingles with footsteps, snippets of conversation, the occasional bike bell, a tarp catching the wind. Together, we’ll slow down and create “sonic maps”: simple drawings that capture not what something looks like, but what it feels like to hear it. No art experience needed. Just curiosity, a willingness to be present, and maybe a desire to experience your surroundings — and yourself — a little differently.

As Oliveros said, “We open in order to listen to the world as a field of possibilities.”

The title Postcards from the Heart refers to the many letters and postcards sent to the Freybes by artists whose work they collected and often hosted in their home over five decades. There’s something deeply affirming in that: ART MATTERS. From the ideas that won’t let you sleep at night to the endless iterations that slowly shape a new truth—art is made, and it’s also witnessed.

It reminded me of the importance of the beholder. A believing mirror. Someone who sees, cherishes, and finds a place for the work among their own daily life. I kept thinking of the invisible magnetism that must have drawn each piece into their home. Did a particular painting sit above the dining table? Was it a comfort in a moment of loss, a celebration of a turning point? Walking from room to room, I couldn’t help but wonder if the collection reflects the emotional seasons of the Freybes’ lives.

Some of the works incorporated unexpected materials and mechanisms—like Milkstone, covered in a thin layer of milk, or Sea-Cow Treaty (Spread) (1977), with its vibrant buckets of coloured water. How were these displayed at home? What conversations unfolded around them? How did living alongside such contemporary, evocative work shape daily experience?

This is the largest private collection I’ve ever visited, and it felt so alive with love. Each piece felt like a gesture of care—selected not just for aesthetics, but for connection: to an artist, a memory, a story, a moment of reflection.

In an interview with curator Eva Respini recorded in the Freybes’ art-filled West Vancouver home, Brigitte—who studied art in Basel and Munich—shared that she always “wanted to be a set designer.” I can’t help but feel that the collection she’s nurtured creates a kind of stage for the imagination. There’s a sense of theatre, of intentional composition, a space where stories can take flight.

Up on the third floor, Riopelle: Crossroads in Time offers another kind of journey—through five decades of tireless, evolving dedication to a singular craft. I was especially moved by his works from the 1950s, where he layered oil paint into dazzling, mosaic-like textures I had never seen before. The surfaces seemed to pulse with life.

Toward the later years, his work leaned further into abstraction, incorporating loose lines and even spray paint—a gesture perhaps inspired by his presence in the New York art scene, and his early solo show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1954. That gallery, known for representing French avant-garde artists, helped introduce Riopelle’s unique voice to North American audiences.

It made me think of other large-scale retrospectives I’ve seen—how both Matisse and Monet moved into abstraction in their later years. After a lifetime of painting, the soul of their work was still so clearly present, distilled into reduced linework and form.

There’s a philosophy of painting in China called shan shui, which literally means “mountain-water.” In this tradition, painters don’t aim to replicate what they see in nature, but rather to express what they think and feel about it. One master once said:

“Shan shui painting refutes color, light, shadow, and personal brushwork. It is not a window for the viewer’s eye—it is an object for the viewer’s mind. A vehicle of philosophy.”

That idea has stayed with me.

Between these two floors of the gallery, I felt a quiet truth settle in: no matter what your passion is—collecting, curating, painting, sculpting—when we give ourselves to our craft wholeheartedly, over a lifetime, something deeper begins to reveal itself. Maybe it’s not just art we’re making, but our own philosophy, made visible.

And here’s a fascinating tidbit I came across: back in 1974, social psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron conducted a now-famous experiment on the Capilano Suspension Bridge. They found that men approached by a female researcher on the swaying, slightly terrifying bridge were significantly more likely to call her afterward than men approached on a more stable bridge. Why? The theory goes that the adrenaline from fear was misattributed to romantic or sexual attraction. This supported Stanley Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion, which suggests that when we feel physiological arousal, we look to our environment for cues to label it—be it fear, excitement, or love. Our bodies and minds are constantly in fluid, sense-making collaboration, even when we’re not aware of it.

But beyond psychology, it was another symbiotic relationship in the forest that captured my attention: lichens. These ancient life forms are fascinating partnerships between fungi and algae or cyanobacteria. They flourish in old-growth forests and are exquisitely sensitive to their environments—reacting to shifts in light, humidity, pollution, and disturbance.

Here in British Columbia, lichens act like quiet archivists of the forest’s story. Some, like Old Man’s Beard, Cryptic Paw Lichen, and the poetically named Lobaria species, are powerful indicators of biodiversity and ecological balance.

According to Troy McMullin, a lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, judging a forest’s health purely by tree age oversimplifies its complexity. Lichens, he says, are like the coral reefs of the forest—or its canaries in the coal mine. They reveal far more about the depth, resilience, and history of an ecosystem than meets the eye.

Some lichens are even “intolerant to disturbance,” meaning they only survive in the untouched quiet of true old-growth.

McMullin and Yolanda Wiersma, a researcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland, are now studying these species as a way to understand and determine forest age and ecological integrity. If you're curious, you can read more about their work here

What if our feelings are data?

Not the kind you graph in spreadsheets, but signals—clues—that help us better understand ourselves, our personal histories, and the world around us. We started by building emotional landscapes using ink, paper, and our imaginations. From the “Cave of Depression” to the “Isle of Edgy,” students charted their internal terrains, guided by questions like: What’s a place you go to when you feel overwhelmed? What’s somewhere that makes you feel peace?

Each student created their own “data collector”—a tool to track emotional responses and translate them into visual language. Titles like “When Life Ruffles Your Feathers” and “There’s Still Light in the Dark” reflected the depth, insight, and whimsy of their inner worlds.

As the weeks went on, new lands emerged—blending joy, grief, hope, fear, and everything in between. When the residency neared its end, students designed fantastical vehicles to travel across their emotional geographies. There was the “Train of Peace,” sidecars powered by imagination, and even rocket farts that could launch you over a volcano.

In groups of three, students visited one another’s worlds, threaded together with literal thread and collaborative story dice. Together, we imagined the challenges they might encounter along the way: being poisoned by a potion that made you believe you didn’t belong at the Lagoon of Sadness—only to discover a hidden window that revealed you already did. Or a River of Peace, split in half, and restored with the magic of jelly beans.

Together, we became emotion scientists—using movement, mark-making, and storytelling to chart and share both the visible and invisible.

This was my first time ever working with children—and they totally blew me away.

I watched them pull in wolves and eagles from their culture stories, solve abstract problems with full-hearted creativity and delightful absurdity. It was a joyful reminder of the freedom we all once had to express ourselves without hesitation.

It was also a completely new way of working for me—learning to adapt to different learning styles, attention spans, and developmental stages in a group of 30. I quickly realized that short, clear instructions were key. But once they were off and running, there was no reeling them back in. Somewhere along the way, I became part P.E. teacher, part artist—exploring big ideas through physical games, metaphor, and movement.

And even in moments when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing, there’d be a quiet moment—a student sharing something thoughtful, tender, or brave—that reminded me of the point. That maybe, they’ll walk away from this knowing that all parts of them—the messy, curious, silly, and serious—are valid. And that those parts are worth listening to.

Thanks for reading 💫
If you're interested in emotional mapping, creative facilitation, or arts-based learning, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or drop me a note—I’m always up for a chat.

#ArtsEducation #AIRSResidency #EmotionalMapping #ArtistInSchools #CommunityArts #VancouverArtist

Something about it tugged at a deep part of me. It felt important—something new I needed to tend to. Like a lighthouse winking through the fog, I leaned in closer. It wasn’t therapy, but it was an opening. A space where we could step outside the bustle of the everyday and, without judgment or expectation, imagine who we might be in our fullest selves.

Returning to my art practice as an adult felt like an emergency landing. That year, I was in denial about how burnt out I was—living in the wake of COVID with brain fog, a lost sense of taste, and a complicated romantic relationship ending painfully. I quit my job—or rather, I simply couldn’t continue. My new mouth guard was already cracked from the stress grinding my molars, and I didn’t see things getting any better.

Looking back now, it seems absurd that I expected another season of productivity after. But I did. I fully believed I would seamlessly transition into a personal Renaissance, effortlessly reclaiming the tactile, thriving art practice I had left behind at Emily Carr University a decade ago.

Working with a therapist through WorkBC, I began to unpack what I had actually experienced—and how my natural defense to push through the pain instilled by the work ethic of two hardworking immigrant parents wasn’t going to cut it this time.

But anyway—after months of waiting for creativity to strike, I was horrified that my brain was broken. I had ignored and betrayed the parts of me that had yearned so long to flourish that I’ve killed them like the Tamagotchi I forgot to feed. Wherever my artistry resided, had atrophied and become inhospitable.

My therapist, Nicole, amongst so many gentle offerings suggested: "Sometimes when we overthink, we are under-feeling." That idea sparked a year of experimentation—what if I let myself feel first? My default had always been thinking myself into oblivion. What if I consciously delayed judgment for as long as possible?

In those quiet meetings with myself, a strange sadness poured from my brush, then my pen. There was no heroic transformation, no montage of resilience—just me, often feeling small, broken, and fragile. I let these emotions speak to me through my art. It was painful to witness, but I allowed it. I painted a lot of seeds for a time, and a mantra emerged: "A seed is a seed is a seed." Slowly, I started to believe that, just like a seed, I would have my time in the sun. But first, I had to stop struggling against the dark.

That’s when "My Mother’s Daughter" came pouring out of me—a poem born from a late-night conversation with a friend about being a third-culture kid. We live between cultures, constantly toggling. For me, that meant immigrating from Hong Kong early on and navigating work and school in Canada differently than I did at home. That night, my friend shared a Spanish phrase that translates to "neither here nor there." We spoke about how adaptable this experience made us—but also about the costs. The sacrifices of foreign names, the dissociation from certain customs in exchange for safety. Over the years, we had helped each other name the burnout and anxiety that came with this constant emotional labor, the harsh inner critic we had internalized.

Later, reflecting on my surprise at the sadness in my work, I realized that having company in this process had helped me meet a part of myself I often buried.

I started reading about somatics—Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No, and Vancouver-based therapist Hilary McBride’s The Wisdom of the Body. McBride writes about the myth of "body hierarchy"—how our culture frames the body as something to overcome. We are unconsciously ranked by youth, skin color, gender, ability. To survive, we often dissociate—from pain, from oppression, from hunger, from exhaustion.

But the same walls that protect us from pain also keep us from joy. This fear-based paradigm helps us survive, but it cannot help us flourish. I became deeply interested in how somatic traditions from around the world offer alternative ways of knowing—ways that honor the full range of human experiences, neurodivergence, and embodiment. I wanted to experiment with how we might co-create this knowledge, using art to map and research both our unique and shared experiences.

That curiosity led me here. Two years later, after one thing led to another, I’m now preparing to launch my first cohort: Emotion Cartography – Navigating Our Inner and Outer Worlds Through Art and Conversation. This 5-week series, starting March 15th, will be a space where we gather every Saturday to explore, collaborate, and snack.

In this series, we’ll explore:

• Emotional regulation skills

• Emotional literacy

• Data visualization

• The mind-body connection

• Active listening

• Empathy for self and others

Some of the tools we’ll use include:

• Data Collectors – guiding us to explore our senses, helping us notice where we feel rooted, connected, and even where we feel discomfort.

• A Collective Map – a large, evolving map where we layer emotions and shared experiences over time.

• Somatic Body Mapping – a tool to connect our experiences with our physical expressions, allowing us to see patterns in our emotional landscapes.

I’m so curious about where this adventure will take us—how we might expand on the ways we describe our feelings in relation to our bodies. We already say things like "My heart hurts," "I have butterflies in my stomach," or "It feels like my chest is going to burst!"

In a study called Bodily Maps of Emotions, over 700 people were asked to color where they felt emotions on a blank body outline. The results were fascinating—people reported feeling emotions in similar places across the body. This, along with research on the mind-body connection, shows how emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations are deeply linked. What we feel emotionally impacts our bodies, and our physical states influence our thoughts and emotions in turn.

If you live in Vancouver and want to explore this together, there are 15 first come first serve spots in the cohort! You can get more details and sign up here: https://www.hellochowder.com/new-events/emotion-cartography

Subscribe now