About Our Artist Instructors

Stephanie Cormier is a Toronto-based artist working across sculpture, textiles, photography, and drawing and painting. She works with a variety of sculptural and digital media, often fusing the two as well as combining art and the labour of craft. Her research centres around finding resourcefulness and wonder in everyday materials and actions. She was born in Montreal but came of age in rural parts of the Caribbean, returning to Canada as an adult. 

Stephanie holds a BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design (2005) and an MFA from the University of Guelph (2014), has exhibited across Canada and has participated in exhibitions and residencies in the US, the Caribbean, and the UK. 

Stephanie has taught at The Children’s Art Studio, The Toronto School of Art and The University of Guelph. Her experience as an Outdoor Play and Learning Mentor with Earth Day Canada and the TDSB brings an approach that is experiential, hands on and embraces child-led creativity.

Shannon Moynagh is an artist and art educator from Brampton ON. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art from York University where she specialized in painting and print media. Shannon’s art practice includes drawing, painting, photography and print media. Her work often draws from nature, growth and transformation as inspiration. Shannon is a member of the inPrint Collective, where she works and teaches at their shared studio space in Toronto. Shannon has been teaching young artists for over a decade. Her main focus with students is sharing the joy of art-making, fostering a sense of community in the studio, and strengthening their creative problem-solving skills through experimentation with methods and materials.

Amanda Arcuri is a photography based artist from Toronto and holds a BFA from Ryerson University and an M.A.A. from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Amanda’s work has been displayed across Canada; depicting altered and dramatized landscapes of installed light or materials within the greenery. She has enjoyed teaching art classes for the past 10 years encouraging creativity, experiential learning and a focus on developing a keen eye.

Yan Wen Chang (b. 1993) immigrated to Toronto, alone, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the age of 17. Chang holds an MFA from the University of Guelph (2022) and received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University (2015).

Chang’s paintings explore the two opposing yet coexisting realities of the American Dream; one reality as hopeful and defiant, and the other as hopeless and desperate. Chang’s solo exhibitions include Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto (2023); General Hardware, Toronto (2022); and X in Residency, Toronto (2022). Her 33-foot public billboard for Hamilton Artists’ Inc. was on display 2022 to 2023.  Her upcoming exhibitions include Weatherproof, Chicago (2024) and A.D. NYC, New York (2024). 

Chang’s paintings are included in the collections of the Toronto-Dominion bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, the Art Gallery of Guelph as well as in private collections in Canada, the U.S.A., and Malaysia.
Website: http://yanwenchang.com

Sarah Mihara Creagen is a white passing mixed-race Japanese Canadian Queer artist born in Nova Scotia and currently living in Toronto. Her practice consists of research into intersecting histories of the medical system and botany, and considers these topics through personal experiences of queerness, chronic illness and disability while living with Crohn’s Disease.

Sarah received her MFA in 2018 from Hunter College in New York City, and was a 2018 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow. She has had solo exhibitions at Katharine Mulherin’s NO FOUNDATION gallery (Toronto), SPRING/BREAK Art Show and Hercules Studios Gallery in New York City, and artist-run centres across Canada including Montreal, Halifax, and London, ON.

Her work has been featured in The NY Times “What to See in New York Art Galleries Right Now”, Hyperallergic, and Visual Arts News. Sarah's work has been supported through multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Art Council grants, and the Toronto Arts Council. 

www.sarahcreagen.com

Jason Deary is an emerging visual artist with an MFA from OCAD University and a BFA from the University of Windsor. His abstract paintings focus on issues of memory, recording and history. His work has been shown in Toronto, London, Calgary, Vancouver and New York City amongst others. Deary was a recent recipient of grants from Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council.

Rachael Dodgson is a Toronto-based artist, educator, and arts worker. As a recent graduate of York University's MFA program, Rachael's current research uses printmaking to create bold and immersive assemblages of surface and abstract imagery.  Transmuting feelings evoked digitally into material, situating them within our embodied AFK (away from keyboard) lives, Rachael contemplates the significance of digital experience and relationships in the formation of identity. Drawing connections between the analog mesh of a silkscreen and the digital screens we use daily. 

Rachael has BFA from Queen’s University and has participated in solo and group exhibitions and residences as well as received grants from the Ontario Arts Council. 

Passionate about building community and arts education, Rachael has spent the last decade teaching visual art and facilitating arts programming and events throughout the city. 

Heather Gentleman is a narrative artist based in Toronto. She holds an MA Studio from UAL in London, UK, and a BA Studio from University of Guelph. Gentleman works primarily in painting and drawing, but also works in sculpture, video, writing, textiles, installation, audio and performance. She observes contemporary culture in a historical context, and how ideas, themes and social mores recur and are paralleled from one time period to another and how our understanding of the past, and the future, is shaped by our own contemporary viewpoint.
www.hagatelier.com

Anran Guo is a queer female artist currently based in Hamilton. She grew up in China and came to Canada in 2014. Guo holds a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art, an HBA in Art and Art History ( jointly with Sheridan College), and a Certificate in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto. 

Guo is primarily focused on sculptures and installations. Her works are metaphorical and playful, offer layered readings in critiques of social and political systems. Guo’s works highlight simple everyday objects with minimum intervention, create low-barrier conversations, and call upon the viewers to question invisible power dynamics in society. 

Guo’s works have been exhibited across the GTA, and collected by Sheridan College

Atleigh Homma received her BFA in 2016 from OCAD University's Drawing and Painting department. She went on to garner Canada’s portraiture competition, the Kingston Prize, for a painted self-portrait in 2019. In her art practice she currently utilizes painting and textiles, focusing on cultural identity, care and wellbeing, she looks to find connection to her ancestors using inherited heirlooms, knick-knacks and domestic objects as subjects for her works, thus creating scenes that call upon memory and familial history. As an instructor at the AGO Atleigh loves planning projects and helping students both learn new techniques and implement them.

Jessie Jakumeit is an award winning Visual Artist and Educator from Vancouver. She holds a BFA from the University of Victoria and a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto. In 2015, she completed an International Residency in northern New Mexico funded by the Canada Arts Council. In 2017, she won a Toronto Arts Council grant to create living sculptures. Curiosity led her to teaching Art at the Royal BC Museum, Two Rivers Gallery, Latcham Gallery, the Living Arts Centre and Art City. She loves guiding her students through a creative process filled with experimentation and play.

David Kaarsemaker’s paintings address the limitations of spatial illusion, creating an experience of depth that doesn't take for granted the transparency of the picture plane, but rather engages in visual dialogue with it. He received an MFA from the University of Ottawa in 2014 and a BFA from Concordia University in 2004 and was selected as a finalist in the 2017 RBC Painting Competition. Before moving to Toronto in 2017, Kaarsemaker taught painting and drawing in Ottawa at Algonquin College and the Ottawa School of Art, and in St John’s NL at the Rooms Provincial Gallery and the Anna Templeton Centre.

David Lapp is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Western Ontario (B.A. Psychology). He has been teaching cartooning at the Art Gallery of Ontario and Avenue Road Arts School for over fifteen years. Dave has created three graphic novels, Drop In, Children of the Atom, and People Around Here, which have been published by Conundrum Press. In addition to his graphic novels, his artwork can also be seen in Taddle Creek magazine. Dave’s work was chosen for the ‘Best American Comics’ series for 2010, 2011, and 2016. He is currently working on a 500 page graphic novel for which he has received Canada and Ontario Arts Council grants.

Janine Lindgren, AOCA, Hon. BFA, B.Ed.
Janine is a studio instructor for Youth and Children, and has been working in the Education department for 28 years. She is a sculptor, printmaker, and loves life drawing. Art, education, and creation are passions she shares.

Daphne McCormack is a graduate of OCAD. After a successful career as an illustrator in both Canada and the U.S., she took on a new pursuit as an Artist Educator in various cultural institutions across Toronto. These would include the Royal Conservatory (Learning Through the Arts), Station Gallery in Whitby, and Walnut Studio’s Blank Canvases Program. She has created various large scale murals with in the TDSB.

Currently she is employed part time at the Art Gallery of Ontario teaching children, youth and adults in summer camps and weekend classes. As well she teaches part time at HarbourfrontCentre School Visits. Daphne enjoys teaching printmaking, drawing, painting (watercolour and acrylic), multimedia and Artist Books. Her work is often inspired by the natural world and environmental issues.

Olia Mishchenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine and moved to Canada in 1997. She studied architecture and art history at the University of Toronto prior to becoming a practicing artist. Mishchenko’s artistic practice is predominantly drawings-based and concerned with built environments. She is also an active member of the Terrarea collective that is engaged in site-specific installations. Mishchenko lives and works in Toronto, where she teaches in the Environmental Design Programme at OCADU, and at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Melissa Pauw is a Toronto based artist and educator. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia (2004) and a BA in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Guelph (2001). Melissa has held teaching positions at the University of British Columbia, Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Harbourfront Centre. Her photography, drawing and video work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States and Spain. Melissa’s teaching focus is exploration based art-making for early learners.

Cleopatria Peterson is a black non-binary trans multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. They printmake, write, illustrate and create comics.They graduated from Fashion Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University and Cross-Disciplinary Art: Publications at OCAD University with a medal for their thesis work. 

They are one of the BIPOC in residence at Open Studio where they showcased their project Bestie Mart, an exploration of printmaking 3D objects to create a fake grocery store. Their work focuses on themes of nature, humour, identity and above all things, love.

You can see their work at www.cleopatria.ca

Amanda Rataj is an artist and weaver. She studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and has developed her contemporary craft practice through research-based projects, artist residencies, professional exhibitions, and lectures. Recent exhibitions include Generation at Craft Ontario as part of the Design TO festival (2023), Crosscurrents: Canada In the Making at the Textile Museum of Canada (2018), and Nothing is Newer Than Tradition (Art Gallery of Burlington, 2017).

Song is an artist and designer based in Toronto. She studied fine art, especially sculpture in her bachelor’s and art education in her master’s in South Korea. She taught and made dynamic art class curriculums for different age groups and diverse background people in countries such as Korea, China, Jordan, Lebanon, and DR Congo for years and did mural works for the schools and community centres above countries.

After coming to Canada, she got a diploma in Interior Decorating and collaborated on fine art and design working at IKEA as a designer. Currently, she is focusing on her artwork and art education.

Hemangi Shroff (she/her) is a contemporary visual artist living and working in Toronto, an immigrant-settler from Mumbai, India. Her work includes mixed media ‘cultural abstraction’ paintings that explore themes of identity, culture, and belonging. She is committed to using art to create meaningful dialogue and social change.

Over the course of her career, Hemangi has worked with learners of different abilities, backgrounds, and ages in both the UAE and Canada.  Since moving to Toronto in 2016 she has visited over sixty schools and taught art in over three hundred classrooms across the GTA, developed curriculum, and facilitated a variety of community art projects.

With a passion for art education, she has worked with numerous community organizations across the city to make art accessible to children and youth, and she is thrilled to be a part of the AGO team where she will be able to provide learners with the opportunity to interact live with art in a gallery setting, and then bring the inspiration to their own work. In her practice of student-centered pedagogy, she encourages learners to discuss, observe, and create in a safe, non-judgmental environment where everyone is included.  

Hemangi holds Continuing Education certificates from George Brown College in Fine Arts Foundation and Cartooning and Illustration.

Sarah Zanchetta (she/they) is a textile artist and educator. She holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University. They have previously taught at the University of Toronto and collaborated with several organizations to create community-based work for their permanent collections, including the Kortright Centre for Conservation and Evergreen Brick Works. Her art practice dives into the loss of connection and knowledge of poisonous plants that grow in North America. She seeks to foster a relationship with flora without placing the weight of human benefit in the foreground. Many of their works simultaneously track her hands-on relationship with an individual plant and the unravelling of stories, scientific facts and myths that surround them. Zanchetta's research-focused practice directly weaves into her many years of teaching experience.