’Tis the season to get to know some of your fellow Memorial colleagues a little better.

Every year’s end, the Gazette makes a foray into the outside lives of some of the people we spend our daytime hours with.

Whether it’s a talent for illustration, instrument building, creative writing or martial arts, the Memorial University community boasts all kinds of interesting pastimes and passions.

Read on to meet this year’s featured hidden talents from the Labrador Campus, the Marine Institute, Alumni Engagement and Development and the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Alexandra Sawatzky

Dr. Alexandra Sawatzky says she has been drawing for as long as she can remember.

Her favourite childhood activity became a creative and valuable skill while conducting her doctoral research with Inuit partners in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, while in her late 20s, she says.

It was during that period of her life that she learned how illustrations can bring together diverse ideas and perspectives in ways that made people feel more embedded into collaborative work.

“When someone sees their ideas reflected back visually — interwoven with the ideas of others — it becomes a deeply affirming experience,” said Dr. Sawatzky, who is a special projects manager and an adjunct professor at the School of Arctic and Subarctic Studies, Labrador Campus. “It’s no longer just their contribution in isolation; it’s part of a collective vision taking shape.”

The experience shaped how she approaches illustration today — blending her passion for visual storytelling with her research background.

“For me, relationships are at the heart of all my work. Collaborating with brilliant, curious people has helped me build a career where art and research come together, opening up new ways of connecting and communicating.”

When asked about some of her favourite subjects to draw, she says it’s more accurate to say she has favourite themes.

Whether it’s illustrating a story about someone’s favourite food or creating visuals that summarize community-based research projects, Dr. Sawatzky says she loves working at the intersection of art, design, research and storytelling.

Her process always begins with asking questions with her collaborators: Who is it for? What story are they trying to tell? Where will it be shared?

Once the purpose and themes are clear, she starts sketching and gathering feedback.

From there, it’s a back and forth, refining the content and adding design elements until the final product not only conveys the story but sparks further conversation.

It’s as if the visuals become a shared canvas, where everyone’s input contributes to building something together.

That process of seeing and being seen through visuals fosters a strong sense of shared ownership and connection.

For example, when working in Rigolet, her natural inclination to draw became an “essential” part of communicating the research, she says.

“It wasn’t something I planned, it’s just how I make sense of the world. Ultimately, my goal is to create visuals that don’t just convey information, but also evoke feelings of belonging, alignment and possibility — helping to move the work forward in ways that are collaborative and meaningful.”

As for her self-initiated work, Dr. Sawatzky says her inspiration usually comes from how she’s experiencing or relating to the world at that moment.

She sees her art as a way of reflecting on those experiences and responding to them.

“For me, the process of creating is what’s most inspiring. When I’m illustrating, I feel grounded and connected — to myself, to the project, and to the world around me.”

Dr. Rob Brown

It seems Dr. Rob Brown has always had the urge to not only make music, but make the instruments themselves.

As a child, he remembers carving whistles out of alder branches with a pocket knife.

Those simple instruments were a precursor to his latest creation: a set of uilleann pipes (an Irish Gaelic word, it’s pronounced “ill-in”).

While there are pipers’ clubs in parts of Central and South America, East Asia and many parts of the U.S., Canada and Europe, there are maybe only half a dozen uilleann pipe players in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Dr. Brown, a research scientist in the School of Maritime Studies at the Marine Institute who studies aspects of human performance and behaviour as they relate to maritime and Arctic safety, is one of them.

He picked up the instrument in 1996, playing a set made by a friend and now mentor Neil O’Grady of Carbonear, who has been making uilleann pipes professionally for years. The process of building his own set came about organically.

“In the early 2000s my wife, Michelle Brophy, a professional maker of Irish wooden flutes did some contract work for Neil, so we bought a wood lathe and some other machinery,” he said.

Dr. Brown decided he would join in the creative process and started making a part, too. It was shortly thereafter he noticed Heritage N.L.’s Craft at Risk Program, in which the organization identified a range of traditional crafts in the province that are deemed to be in danger of dying out.

It called for people interested to learn from a mentor of a craft to participate.

While uilleann pipe-making doesn’t have a longstanding tradition in the province, as one of only a handful of makers worldwide, Mr. O’Grady was deemed a great fit for the program. The pair decided to apply together and was approved to work on a set for Dr. Brown.

He says the farther along he gets, the more he realizes how much there is to it.

The work requires leather working of the bellows, wood working with the different pipes and metal working for making keys.

Then there is the functional side: what will it sound like?

“There are over 200 individual parts, but then there’s the playability side of things which, frankly, is a little more daunting than I’d realized,” he said. “Will I be happy with it? Will I be able to play it with others? Will it be in tune? There’s an awful lot to it!”

While he is still in the process of making the pipes, he says he’s happy with them so far.

“Going in the workshop and seeing the instrument progress from solid blocks of wood, sheets of leather and brass tubing and brass plate into something that allows me to express myself through music is just magic.”

Heidi Wicks

Getting a sneak preview of Heidi Wicks’ next book, Here, feels like a literary version of a white-water raft trip: an exhilarating torrent of characters, concepts and themes.

Due out in May 2025, Here is a collection of interconnected short stories set in a colonial merchant mansion in St. John’s and spanning the early 1900s to the 2020s.

“One character is a crow, there’s a story about a girl rock band — one of the members has connections with the fairy realm,” said Ms. Wicks, a communications advisor in Alumni Engagement and Development and an award-winning author. “There’s a theologian who almost assassinates someone, there’s a girl who accidentally eavesdrops on a couple of older women when the phone lines get crossed, a group of hippies who crawl into a sort of parallel reality, a recurring storyline about a tragic, esoteric ballerina who has been abandoned by her husband, becomes an alcoholic and is addicted to buying antiques. Oh, and Joey Smallwood is a periphery presence.”

On the themes and concepts front, a time-travelling tunnel and a mirror that allows glimpses into other spheres are two storytelling devices she employs, all the while weaving the universal experiences of grief and loss throughout.

“There are also laughs and fresh life and wackiness,” she said. “I hope it’s a bit of a wild ride for people!”

Combining the elements of skilled storytelling started at an early age for the Memorial alumna, who graduated with a master of arts degree in creative writing in 2019.

Engaging all the senses and building multiple levels of observation into her work can be traced back to her earliest school years, when her father, then a librarian, would bring books home for them to read together.

She says she “loved everything” about the experience — the particular book he chose, its smell, the way he read to her, the feel of the cellophane wrap on the cover and peeking at the card in the back pocket to see who read it last.

No doubt she will bring that multiplicity of thought to her future writing projects: she is in the early stages of developing a summer creative writing camp for kids and says she would love to write a film, tv or web series script.

She also says since Here is set in the past, she’d like her next book to be about the future.

Regardless of what she does next, Ms. Wicks will continue to create worlds in stories — not just for her appreciative readers, but for herself, too.

“Writing helps me make sense of the world, of my own feelings and consider how other people may experience things differently than myself.”

Dr. David Gill

When asked where his interest in tae kwon do came from, Dr. David Gill says being a child of the ’80s had a lot to do with it.

“I’ve always been interested in martial arts — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle generation and all,” said the acting associate dean of undergraduate programs and an associate professor in the Faculty of Education.

And while he was close to achieving his black belt as a teenager, he drifted away from the sport before undergoing the rigorous test required.

It wasn’t until his kids came along that he was inspired once more to achieve the goal that eluded him all those years ago.

When his daughter Emily tried dance and decided it was not for her, Dr. Gill saw his chance.

When she turned five, Dad and daughter signed up for a family class at Earle’s Tae Kwon Do in Bay Roberts. This time around, it stuck.

This past spring, after six years of dedicated practice, they got their black belts together.

Dr. Gill says the test is “pretty intense,” requiring multiple Poomsae (kicks and kick patterns), board breaking and a sparring match.

“It was over a year of preparation from our last coloured belt test and then a 1.5-hour session all focused on just us,” he said. “I think Emily was nervous, but she was super excited and happy to pass. I was just tired and relieved it was over, more like a sense of accomplishment than excitement for me.”

The pair have also competed and placed provincially and nationally as a family team a few times. Emily is also on the competitive sparring team with the aim of trying out for Team N.L. when she turns 12 next year.

“I get to learn with her and watch her grow and develop her ability and skill at her side, helping her,” said the proud dad. “The funny thing is that now she can help me.”

And what are dad’s next goals for himself?

Dr. Gill says he’d like to at least get to the master level, which is called a fifth dan. The time and physical requirements only get longer and harder.

“If I stay at it, it would take me about 10 years or more to get to that point . . . If not, it’s okay. Now that I have my black belt, I’m interested in getting some referee credentials.”