Khadija Aziz is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Toronto and Montréal. Not tied to any particular medium, she makes sense of her world through material gestures of mark-making. Throug... h her artistic and educational practice, she fosters community-building and individual development by establishing grounds for a collective learning experience. Khadija’s art has been exhibited in Canada, Australia, and Austria. Her most recent artist residency was at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia. In recognition of my creative practice, Khadija received the Shanks Memorial Award in Textiles from Craft Ontario and the Creative Promise Award from Surface Design Association in 2020. She received the Award of Excellence in Community Engagement from the Ontario Museum Association in 2019 for her contributions to the Textile Museum of Canada.

Brandon Wulff is an Autistic quilt Artist who works with interior decorators and designers to create unique pieces....

Estée Klar holds a PhD Critical Disability Studies from York University. Her dissertation, Neurodiversity in Relation: an artistic intraethnography is a collaborative work with Adam Wolfond, now a pu... blished writer and the first non-speaking classically autistic M.A. student in Canada. Klar is also a facilitator and an artist and founder of dis assembly, a lab for neurodiverse artistic experimentation involving processes that explore conditions and techniques for human and more-than-human relation and support located at Artscape Youngplace in Toronto. She collaborates with others around the world in these projects. Klar is also the founder/director of the former Autism Acceptance Project (2006—10) and its subsequent artistic-activist events, and the original blogger at The Joy of Autism (2004-8) which over the years has resonated throughout the autistic community. She is an artist and filmmaker and her can be seen at www.esteerelation.com and dis-assembly.ca.

Adam Wolfond is an autistic poet and artist who uses a device to speak. He has been featured poets.org as the youngest poet to ever be published there and his work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine (2023). Wolfond has also exhibited his film and installation work in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-founder of dis assembly in Toronto, an arts collective which practices techniques for neurodiversity. Languaging is a way of movement, a continual disassembling, challenging the way of neurotypical grammars for more diversities to come. His work can be viewed at adamwolfond.com and also, dis-assembly.ca. His chapbooks of poetry In Way of Music Water Answers Toward Questions Other Than What Is Autism, are available here at the studio. His book The Wanting Way which we are celebrating this evening is published by Milkweed Publishing Multiverse Series and In The Way of Water will be published by Punctum University Press in 2023.

Catherine Heard’s practice employs fine craft as a foil for abject subject matter, delving into contested imagery and primal anxieties of the human psyche. Her current project, Redwork: The Emperor ... of Atlantis, invites the public to collaborate in the creation of a textile installation that utilizes traditional redwork embroidery techniques to engage histories of injustice. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Art Gallery of Kamloops, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Catherine Heard holds an undergraduate degree from OCADU, and a Master of Visual Studies degree from the University of Toronto. She is an assistant professor at the School of Creative Arts of the University of Windsor. Catherine Heard is represented by Birch Contemporary Gallery in Toronto and online by CMS Art Projects.

Paulina Wiszowata’s (she/they) innate interest in the art world manifests itself in her artistic practice, in which she critically reflects upon and examines many different notions of art and what i... t means to be an artist. Framing herself as a contemporary conceptual artist, she utilizes a multitude of motifs including humour, language and de-skilling in order to demonstrate these self-reflective concepts and her hyperawareness of them. Her identity as an artist is rooted in her training in the visual arts, with a primary focus on painting, performance, and most recently rugmaking; she uses these fields to construct an effortless appearance with the use of calculated gestures that both fulfill and critique her own identity. Art is simply the means in which she chooses to question herself, her community and her craft; in doing so, she attempts to understand the conventions of being an artist, where these conventions originate from and how they are defined.

``I have had a lifelong love of designing and making things, that led me to start my creative career at the Ontario College of Art in the 1980s.

There, I realized that fabric design and screenp... rinting were the perfect artform for me. This all brought together my love of fashion/ sewing/drawing and colour. Textile design was also the perfect way for me to express my feelings, my feminist/political views and to (hopefully!) be self employed.

I became an indie fashion entrepreneur, with my business Peach Berserk in 1987. This business showcased my quirky, unique and progressive prints. My wildly popular studio/fashion boutique was open for 20 years, leading Fodor's Travel Guide to describe me as 'the undisputed monarch of Queen St West'.

Now from my reimagined store front space in Parkdale, Toronto, I run a screenprint studio/art space where I teach textile classes, host events and design/sell my screenprinted clothes. My line now is almost exclusively upcycled and repurposed. I love this 'new frontier' in my creative life and I feel I still have so much to say through textiles.
My current design/screenprinting classes are also so important to me. I am a visual arts teaching partner with the Toronto District School Board, and teach classes for Workman Arts in Toronto as well as at community centres, colleges, indigenous centres throughout Ontario and beyond. I have gone as far away as Northern Cambodia to teach my craft.

My DVD Screenprinting With Peach Berserk and Biz Tips for MisFits, and my book, Silkscreen NOW have sold internationally, and I'm now working on a new one too!``

Apanaki Temitayo is a Trinidadian-raised, Toronto-based bi-sexual, multi-disciplinary, multimedia fibre artist and art facilitator. She is the proud mother of three. Her canvas compositions are an exp... ression of her Trinidadian heritage and spirituality. Apanaki is currently represented in the Sales and Rental Program at the (AGO) Art Gallery of Ontario. She is a member of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. She was the (CAMH) Center for Addiction and Mental Health's 1st Artist in Wellness, 2019 - 2021. She was a featured artist at Kuumba Exhibit, Where She Went, She Thrived at Harbourfront Centre presented by Nia Centre for the Arts, 2021. She was the Workman Arts Artist-in-Residence for 2017 - 2018. She had featured in artwork Numb at Workman Arts, Being Scene 20th Annual Juried Virtual Exhibition 2021, and To Speak Without Speaking. She made her international debut at the North Charleston Cultural Arts Department, 9th Annual African American Fiber Art Exhibition: Maya Angelou, with her original artwork, Mama’s Watching in South Carolina. The first woman of colour to be featured in Room Magazine: Woman of Color Issue for 2016. Her original artwork Oshun Blooming was commissioned for the Grow Room Feminist Literary Festival 2018 in Vancouver and is now part of the private collection of Donna Slaight, Founder of The Slaight Family Foundation.

V Vallières is a Toronto-based, multi-media artist, working primarily in ceramics, textiles and printmaking. They hold a BFA from Concordia University and have attended residencies in Montréal, Monc... ton and Winnipeg. As a film curator, they co-programmed monthly film and performance events. V Vallières has received multiple grants for their work, which have been exhibited widely, and have had pieces acquired for the CAMH permanent art collection. They continue to produce work in community studios and identify as non-binary, queer and neurodivergent. They have worked in movie theaters for the past fifteen years and greatly enjoy visual stimuli.