Welcome to the Lobby Gallery

Artist Statement

At the core of my practice is an investigation into grief, loss, and humanity’s increasingly fragile relationship with the natural world under the pressures of climate crisis. I work with salvaged ephemera, photographs, and textile interventions to reflect on the psychological and emotional weight of environmental degradation, while interrogating modernity’s extractive systems and their unsustainable costs to both ecosystems and communities.

Storytelling—both ecological and mythic—guides my approach. I am drawn to folktales, historical fragments, and the materiality of vintage objects such as ribbons, 19th-century carte de visite photographs, and delicate textiles. These elements embody cultural memory while carrying the scars of time, creating a visual language of rupture, fragility, and persistence. When lit, translucent fabrics like black organza cast shifting shadows that beckon viewers closer, reminding us that what appears immaterial can still carry weight.

As a non-binary queer artist, I am invested in creating works that resist permanence. This intentional fragility mirrors the precariousness of life in an era of ecological instability and biodiversity loss, while also opening space for resilience and renewal. My practice is not only an environmental inquiry but also a psychosocial one: how we mourn, how we remember, and how we might reimagine our relationship to the natural world.

Artist Bio

Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include What We Make of the Ruins (Ilkeston Contemporary Arts, UK, 2025), Wild Waysides: Queer Ecology and the New Natural (travelling, 2025), and a solo exhibition at White Water Gallery, North Bay, curated by Alex Mæve Campbell (2026). Past highlights include FaultLines (Gagné Contemporary Projects, 2024), other tongues part I: communication curated by Ryan Rice (Onsite Gallery, 2024), and Nuit Blanche with the Throbbing Rose Collective (Toronto, 2024).

Curatorial projects include Indexing Resistance (The Plumb Gallery, 2022), Hit Parade (p|m Gallery, 2014), and Rare & Raw (Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, 2013). They are a founding publisher of KRIT Zine, a contemporary art and critique publication produced with In-Between Studio.

Schem holds a Ph.D. in Communication & Culture from York University and Toronto Metropolitan University, an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts (NYC), and a BFA from OCAD University. Their research and creative projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and SSHRC, among others.

Insta: schem_bader

krit_zine

Artist Statement

I approach my two practices from different but complementary directions. Dance lives in the body—it is immediate, visceral, and fleeting. Choreography allows me to channel urgency, emotion, and presence into movement that only fully exists in the moment of performance. My practice of freeform crochet is precise in a different way and I strive to make each work a meditation on detail, texture, and time; creating work that holds permanence where dance shines in its momentary nature. I feel intimately connected to the feminist history of fiber arts and view it as a cultural structure of matrilineal knowledge. I am constantly playing with a process of visualizing, and building shapes in my work. In dance my medium is the human body, and in crochet it is yarn, and in both instances I have found tension is the element which transforms the idea into its final form. These practices encompass my enduring curiosity and dedication to making, and my goal to invite audiences to experiences that are at once transient and enduring.

Artist Bio

Lydia Wilson is a Canadian multi-hyphenate artist whose practice spans contemporary dance and fiber arts. Having studied Performance Dance at Toronto Metropolitan University, she choreographs works that explore urgency, embodiment, and transformation. As a textile artist, she builds intricate fiber pieces that prioritize softness, detail, and texture. Lydia is also the founder of QnA Collective, a group dedicated to giving queer voices space to ask big questions across disciplines, centering collaboration and experimentation as tools for community building.

Response to the Grimms’ Fairytale, The Musicians of Bremen Town

This collaborative art project was created by a Grade 10 Visual Art class and the Art Club at Weston C. I.

Each group of students learned the Grimms’ Fairytale, The Musicians of Bremen Town, and brainstormed the images they would need to illustrate to tell this story.

Each type of imagery was created with a different technique.  The forest scenes are cut as positive/negative shape designs on red cardstock.  The animal imagery has been created as collages by looking at the art of a children’s book artist named Eric Carle.  Some animal imagery has been hand-drawn using fine liners.  The musical instruments have been drawn using Zentangle patterns.  The kites have been created using origami paper.  The title banners have also been created by using origami.

The new play by Gregory Prest, Bremen Town, tells the story of a journey that leads the main character to many levels of awareness.  The reference to a kite festival is from the text of this play.  

As we developed our project, we reflected on all the journeys that we travel in our lives and came across the board game, The Game of LIFE.  In this game, you travel on many journeys: education/career life, family life, vacation life, and also your life with your pets.  The Action cards mentioned many life experiences that were very relatable and referenced the Grimms’ Fairy Tale quite remarkably.  You will see these Action cards right below the title banner on each wooden cradled board: “Fired for snoozing on the job”, “Cozy Cottage”, “Start a Family Band”, “Write a Children’s Book”.  These are just a few of the Action cards from this game that we included in our project.

In our contemporary lives as city dwellers, we might not go on a hike through a forest to find ourselves, but we definitely travel on many roads that lead us to self-awareness.  We cut up the gameboard from 

The Game of Life to complement our illustrations of the fairytale, The Musicians of Bremen Town.  We found the “yellow road” relatable imagery that illustrates the journeys we travel as city dwellers.  

The text at the top of each panel references the new play by Gregory Prest, by naming a setting or a state of being: Bremen Town, Kite Fest, and New Life.

The fairy tale, The Musicians of  Bremen Town, the new play, Bremen Town and the board game, 

The Game of LIFE,  communicate the message that we need the arts for our well-being at every stage in our lives.  These stories resonated well with the young students at Weston C. I.

Thank you to the Education staff at The Tarragon Theater for allowing us to reflect on a story about self-awareness through collaborative artmaking. 

Thank you also to the teacher advisors at Weston C. I. for their support: Carolyn Beattie and Warren Spagn.

Visual Art Teacher

Irene Faiz

Names of Weston C. I. students:

Hilda A.

Hannah A.

Ashley B.

Princess B.

Azalea C.

Aleeha C.

Sameeha C.

Florlyn D

Javorna D

Hannah G.

Daniel H.

Shabana H.

Evan J.

Makena K.

Hannah L.

Abdirahman M.

Dorothy N.

Galia P.

Jaysanna R.

Demetrius S.

Morris S.

Zhao S.

Jennifer Y.