By Donna McMillan
MELISSA Stickl is director of architecture at G. Douglas Vallee Limited in Simcoe. And, from her farm studio, located on Highway 6 between Port Dover and Highway 24, she is a mixed media collage artist and flower farmer.
Both her vocation and avocation complement each other through her passion for heritage conservation, sustainable architecture, and repurposing of materials. Her collage cards and hang-ready wall pieces often incorporate old sheet music, stamps, ticket stubs, cards, maps, old book pages, and more.
Melissa shared that she likes to think in ephemeral terms to create a relationship between her foreground and background to give the piece more meaning. She selectively chooses what to show and what not to reveal in each creation, sometimes focusing on a small picture or message and then choosing layering to showcase depth.
She enjoys scavenging through the Waterford Antique Market, Franni’s Attic Antiques in Port Rowan, Port Dover Summer Festival, and Treasure Mart to name a few. “I really like the idea of repurposing material. I like to hold onto things. So, I need a reason,” she said.
Melissa has been interested in art from an early age, growing up in Round Plains, a hamlet straddling Highway 24 north of Simcoe. She still owns a favourite painting that she created in kindergarten. Architecture and its hand drawing seemed a natural progression of that interest, she said.
Melissa studied architecture, both her undergraduate degree and master’s, at Carleton University in Ottawa. Throughout her school years and after graduation in 2004, she worked with Ventin Group Architects in Brantford until joining Vallee eight years ago. She enjoys working with heritage projects and adapting them into something new. Her art is like that as well, she shared.
Melissa follows the unique method of Elizabeth St. Hilaire, an award-winning U.S. and internationally-renowned mixed media artist. She dabbled with painting until the lockdowns of COVID-19 spurred her to do more painting and art making.
After creating pieces for their house and gifts for family, Melissa started participating in Port Dover Open Studios three years ago.
September 2025 was her first time in the Norfolk Studio Tour. She also sells cards and stunning hanging works at Cabin 519 in Port Dover.
For small works such as cards, Melissa uses postcards and finds artwork to put together with glue and molding paste to create texture and colour. Gel plates, paste, paper, ripped paper, and repurposed items are all part of her collage process.
Recently, she has also been working with such found objects as spools of colourful thread. For her butterfly piece, Melissa said she incorporated sheet music, painted background, placement of the butterflies, drawing with a paint pen, and then further painting. All her works hang on wood boards.
Norfolk Studio Tour describes her media collages as “a feast of texture, layering and storytelling–all created using repurposed materials. Her pieces explore depth, memory, and imagination, breathing new life into the forgotten and discarded.”
Melissa also enters her flowers and collages in the Norfolk County Fair, where she won multiple prizes this year. Flowers are sold in season at their flower chariot at J & M Farm Studio, 198 Hwy. 6. She has also created works by commission and is on the Board of Directors at Lynnwood Arts.
To connect with Melissa, she can be reached at melissastickl@gmail.com, on Instagram, or at 519-410-2504.
—
Originally published October 22, 2025
