Jacqueline M. St. Pierre is a multidisciplinary visual artist, cultural organizer, founder, essayist and journalist whose work asks what can be repaired, reclaimed or reimagined when we learn to truly pay attention.
Across newsrooms, community spaces and cultural movements, St. Pierre’s practice is rooted in the belief that art, journalism and storytelling are not separate disciplines, but interconnected forms of witness. Her work explores the places where personal memory meets collective history, where environmental crisis meets social responsibility, and where the fractures created by systems of power reveal the possibility of transformation.
She also creates more subversive and conceptual work under the artistic pseudonym Stella Vandal. The name Vandal draws from an ancestral family history connected to the Red River Métis and serves as both lineage and artistic provocation. Through Stella Vandal, she moves into more experimental territory, examining collective memory, resistance, identity, power and social transformation through a symbolic and incisive lens.
The two names represent different currents of the same river: Jacqueline St. Pierre, the witness and storyteller; Stella Vandal, the disruptor and dreamer. Together, they form a creative practice grounded in curiosity, reclamation and the refusal to accept that the world as it exists is the only world possible.
Stella Vandal, art is not simply an object to be viewed, it is a place of encounter. Her multidisciplinary visual practice spans painting, textile, assemblage, installation and experimental forms, using layered materials and symbolic landscapes to explore ecology, industrial memory, belonging and the fragile relationships between people, place and history.
Her work is guided by the understanding that creativity can be a form of inquiry, resistance and remembrance. Landscapes become archives. Materials become witnesses. Ruins become places where new stories take root. Whether working with pigment, fibre, found objects or words, she is drawn to the spaces between destruction and renewal—the moments when something broken begins the slow process of becoming something else.
She is the founder of Signal House, an independent cultural space in Hamilton, Ontario, created as a home for experimental practices, emerging artists and conversations that exist beyond traditional institutional boundaries. Signal House reflects her belief that art spaces can be more than exhibition rooms; they can be gathering places, laboratories for imagination and sites where communities come together to question, create and rebuild.
Alongside her own artistic practice, she has spent decades supporting the creative voices of others as a cultural strategist and communications specialist. She has written artist biographies, exhibition texts, media releases and promotional campaigns for independent artists, musicians and cultural organizations, helping translate creative visions into public narratives. Her communications work has included writing for Indigenous non-profits, culture makers and artists.
She has written artist reviews for the techno label Detroit Underground, among other independent creative communities.
St.Pierre/Vandal is also a co-founder of the burgeoning Watertower Media and upcoming independent publishing house. Through this work, she endeavours to build connections between artists, audiences and communities, guided by the belief that every creative act carries a story deserving of care, context and attention.