Maddy is a comics artist based in Minneapolis who specializes in illustrated explanations of tech, law, and all things complex.

Maddy uses comics to interpret and simplify complex concepts. She first pulls out the key insights from a dense text to write the comic script, and then interprets it visually. Her path to being an artist started out at the University of Michigan Law School, where the urge to create irregular, colorful drawings arose as a reaction against, and a need to simplify, the dense legal texts she was studying. She continues to be passionate about the rule of law and AI’s impact on it, and is a member the Minnesota State Bar Association committee dedicated to determining how AI tools can be used to promote access to justice.

Her work also includes collage and ink picture books and kids activity books (Mad(dy) Libs, A Coloring Buck, The Book of Anger, and an activity designed for the Minneapolis Institute of Art) and comics. The Book of Anger was a chosen winner in American Illustration’s Online Archive, 2020, and her comics have appeared in Planches, The Rumpus, and Graphic Medicine’s Covid Comics collection.

Finally, she started drawing characters on her walls during the blah days of 2020, and is always up for grabbing my Posca markers to make more murals.

Join her at Sketchbooks and Legal Pads if you’re curious about how law, tech, and art overlap or at Maddy, Not Mommy if you wish your kid called you by your first name.

Maddy’s Work Can Also Be Found Here:

• “Langue Maternelle,” comic, April 2025, in Planches, a Québécois comics journal.

• Graphic Interpretation of Shaping AI, a vision paper about the future of AI, by Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, Jeff Dean, Prof. John Hennessy, Prof. Finale Doshi-Velez, Dr. Andy Konwinski, Prof. Sanmi Koyegi, Pelonomi Moiloa, Prof. Emma Pierson, and Prof. David Patterson. My adaptation of the entire paper was commissioned by the Laude Institute. 2025.

• Hennepin County Library purchases “Book of Anger,” “Reality Check,” and “Lake Moments.” for the Hennepin County circulating zine collection. 2023. You can literally go check them out, if you’re in the area!

• Minnesota Center for Book Arts New Editions 2023 Exhibition includes zines “When are they coming back?” and “A Fundamental Right.”

• “Everyone Wants to Know,” Spotlight Comic, The Rumpus. May 2021.

• Activity design and book reading in Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) Virtual Family Day: Coloring My Feelings. April 2021.

• “Opting for Health” commissioned by University of Minnesota Women’s Center for their 60th anniversary Reimagining Feminist Futures zine, December 2020.

• “Blob Party,” an at-home exhibition featuring a number of blob collages. November 2020.

• Collage-making process featured in University of Minnesota’s Artistic Antidote project, 2020.

• “Federal Quarantine Powers” explainer included in Graphic Medicine’s Covid Comics, 2020.

• American Illustration 39 Chosen Winner, included in the American Illustration 39 Online Archive, 2020.

• “Lake In Limbo” featured in Hennepin Lawyer, Jan/Feb 2020.

• Feature in Minnesota Daily, “From Textbook to Sketchbook, Making Legal Concepts Accessible,” January 19, 2020.

• “Book of Anger,” “Lake Moments,” and “Reality Check” zines exhibited for Minnesota Center for Book Arts New Editions Exhibition, 2019.