The Six String Nation project is almost as much about images as it is about history, identity, storytelling and music. Each of our contributors is a visual artist in their own right and the look and feel of the project owes a lot to their individual and collective work.

Doug Nicholson

Doug Nicholson and Andrea Dixon, photographed by Sarah Gillett
Jowi and Doug have known each other since high school and have long shared a deep enthusiasm for all kinds of cultural expressions including music, literature, film and food. But it was Doug's passion for photography that eventually propelled him to the prestigious PhotoArts program at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in Toronto. Upon graduation, Doug began his photography career as an ophthalmological photographer at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where he is now Manager of Digital and Visual Communications.

Doug and Jowi discussed his being involved in the project long before the guitar was built. As it grew closer to realization, Jowi's commitment to making sure the story of Canada embodied in the guitar would be accessible to all Canadians was given shape by the idea to photograph everyone who encountered the guitar in a way that provided a safe and secure environment for that encounter and a record of it that they could share as a memento of the event. They agreed that a blank backdrop would put everyone on a level playing field: the banker atop the tower in Toronto and the Innu kid from Sheshatshiu would be photographed in the same way and the experience would be free to the public. 

Doug designed a portable system that would allow them to accomplish this in just about any situation indoors or out with simple volunteer support. Together they have now carried this system to events of all kinds in every province and territory of Canada and beyond and you'll find the vast majority of the results of that work via the Portraits tab above. Doug has also taken an equal number of candid and performance shots of Voyageur in action at events across Canada and in Piemonte Italy where the portrait feature was also a huge success.

Doug is pictured here with his wife, Andrea Dixon, who has designed various posters and banners and promotional materials for Six String Nation as well as the "Voyageur" wordmark that adorns the case.

Sándor Fizli

Sándor Fizli 
photographed by Blaine Philippi
Jowi had spotted Sándor Fizli's photo credit on a beautiful shot in a Globe and Mail feature on George Rizsanyi so he called him up and asked if would be involved in documenting the construction phase of the project.

With Sándor based in Dartmouth and George near Nova Scotia's south shore, that meant frequent road trips down to the workshop in Pinehurst to document both new materials as they arrived and different stages of the construction process. Sándor set up a small station for doing the materials photography and documented each piece from multiple angles and using different lighting set ups just to keep things interesting.

He documented George at work, as well as inlay artist Sara Nasr when she came on board, and would periodically move sections under construction from the workshop to his photo stage. Sometimes he'd arrive to find George had advanced sections or completed processes he had hoped to document in more detail but the construction was paramount and Sándor simply caught what he could when he could in thousands upon thousands of photos.

So, it's mostly Sándor's images of the guitar's component parts, its interior and exterior and various construction phase photos that you'll find on this site, as well as throughout Jowi's book, where he shares photo authorship credit with Doug Nicholson.

Sándor's images have been published in several prestigious national and international publications, including TIME, Life, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Canadian Business and Paris Match. He has been shooting professionally since 1991 and you can find him online here.
Jowi had spotted Sándor Fizli's photo credit on a beautiful shot in a Globe and Mail feature on George Rizsanyi so he called him up and asked if would be involved in documenting the construction phase of the project.

With Sándor based in Dartmouth and George near Nova Scotia's south shore, that meant frequent road trips down to the workshop in Pinehurst to document both new materials as they arrived and different stages of the construction process. Sándor set up a small station for doing the materials photography and documented each piece from multiple angles and using different lighting set ups just to keep things interesting.

He documented George at work, as well as inlay artist Sara Nasr when she came on board, and would periodically move sections under construction from the workshop to his photo stage. Sometimes he'd arrive to find George had advanced sections or completed processes he had hoped to document in more detail but the construction was paramount and Sándor simply caught what he could when he could in thousands upon thousands of photos.

So, it's mostly Sándor's images of the guitar's component parts, its interior and exterior and various construction phase photos that you'll find on this site, as well as throughout Jowi's book, where he shares photo authorship credit with Doug Nicholson.

Sándor's images have been published in several prestigious national and international publications, including TIME, Life, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Canadian Business and Paris Match. He has been shooting professionally since 1991 and you can find him online here.

Blaine Philippi & Bob Stamp

Blaine Philippi and Bob Stamp 
photographed by Sándor Fizli
Jowi got to know Bob Stamp (pictured, right) while they were both working at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, where Bob was a lighting designer for visiting acts - mostly dance and theatre companies. Several of those acts ended up enticing Bob out on the road for many years, including Loreena McKennitt and Margie Gillis. 

Looking to root himself in Toronto again, Bob joined forces with video producer Blaine Philippi (pictured, left) in creating f8 - a company dedicated to capturing the intimacy of great music performances visually. 

After a Six String Nation TV project with CBC Television collapsed, a couple of financial gifts allowed Jowi to hire f8 to document both the construction of the guitar and its debut on Parliament Hill in the hopes they'd one day be able to produce something independently. Sadly, except for the trailer you'll find on our home page, almost none of the remarkable footage they captured has ever been seen by the public...yet.

Recently, Blaine came across the box of video cassettes that contains all of that footage – so much of which has never been seen by any of us since it was shot. A very special mention goes to Ken MacNeil at Capsule Media in Toronto who did us a huge solid by upscaling and converting all this long lost content to digital files so we can finally see what treasures, literally, remain to be seen.

Darren Wilson

Darren Wilson
photographed by Doug Nicholson
For a great many people, before they ever see an image of Voyageur or of Jowi, they see the logo. Logos are the most essential shorthand for conveying fundamental characteristics of a project or a product or a business. Done right, they fix in the mind and forever stand for the thing they represent. When they change or update or modify, people can often go mad with excitement or enraged by the desecration of something they hold dear. Logos are not to be taken lightly.

Relying on his usual DIY ethos, Jowi created various amateurish logos for the project in its infancy.  IF we could find them again I'm not sure we'd show them. Thankfully, in March of 2003, our old friend Gordon MacLeod introduced us to Darren, a former colleague of his, who had developed brand identities for companies like iMoney, GroceryGateway.com, Delta Hotels, Cumis Insurance and many others. He even designed the enticingly ooey-gooey question mark that stood for the mystery of "how do they get the caramel inside the Caramilk Bar?" Within a few weeks, Darren had come up with the simple and compelling image of the six vibrating strings – as if seen from inside the guitar looking out through the sound hole at a Canadian flag and the vast country it represents – that has been our logo ever since.

A few modifications were made in 2025 to align with some other design standards, incorporate the tagline, account for other languages and anticipate the 20th anniversary of the project in 2026.

Darren continues to consult clients across many sectors on design, UX and usability and to teach those skills to the next generation at York University. Oh, and he also builds guitars (electric ones)! 

See more about ALL of Darren's work at darrenwilson.com