WebSite - New Additions to Arts Etobicoke

Graham Curry moved to Toronto, Canada in 2005 from Chicago, Illinois, USA.

She was Co-Director at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, and Director of Education at Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois. Here in Toronto, Graham has served as the Interim Gallery Director for Gallery 1313. She has also served as the Program Coordinator for the Toronto Botanical Garden and currently works as the Project Coordinator for Art on the Move.

Graham has shown at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, C1 Artspace, Gallery 1313, and AWOL Gallery. She currently teaches adult courses in encaustic painting and acrylic painting at C1 Artspace and children's classes in a variety of media.

She is currently attending OCAD studying Drawing and Painting and is a graduate from The Art Centre at Central Technical School, 3-Year Post-Secondary Adult Art Program where she concentrated in painting and sculpture.

Cass Reimer Co-Program Coordinator

Cass combines program coordination, art education and visual art creation in her mission to make are and creativity accessible to a wider community.

Cass has worked as a visual art educator for children, adults, youth at risk, families and university students since 1990, through organizations including Learning Through the Arts, Artists in Education, Sketch, The Living Arts Centre, The Latcham Gallery and Arts Etobicoke.

Cass' own artwork combines text, drawing and dyes on textile surfaces. Notable exhibitions include Scattered Seeds in 2001 Sofia, Bulgaria, and a female pokes the fire in 2002 in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Designs for the stage include Dora-nominated costumes painted with concrete poetry for The Four Horsemen Project (Volcano, 2007). For years she also worked extensively in costume painting for major Canadian stage and screen productions including The Ring Cycle (Canadian Opera Company), Hana’s Suitcase, X-Men and The Lion King.

Cass met and began working with Shira Spector (now sharing the job of program coordinator) at Concordia University in Montreal during studies towards a BFA in 1994. She moved to Toronto in 1997 after earning a Master of Fine Art with University Fellowship from Northern Illinois University.

Shira Spector Co-Program Coordinator

Shira is highly committed to community enrichment work informed by more then 25 years of involvement in various social justice movements. She is passionate about art as activism and as a tool for social change. She sees defying the mundane as her personal mission in life.

With a BFA (in Fibres) from Concordia University (where she began collaborations with co worker Cass Reimer) her background includes performance and costume work for various independent film and theatre companies. Shira’s artwork has been exhibited in Montreal and Toronto and featured in a variety of publications including Lilith, Fireweed and Canadian Women’s Studies. Her writing is published in the anthologies Confessions of the Other Mother: Non Biological Lesbian Moms Tell All, Who’s Your Daddy?: And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families. Shira’s illustrations have appeared in materials for The 519 Community Centre, The Mayworks Festival for Working People and the Arts, Access Alliance, and The Toronto YWCA.

She has created and implemented arts based programs for children and youth with and without disabilities for a variety of agencies including: Sketch-A Working Arts Studio for Street Involved and Homeless Youth, Learning Through the Arts, The 519 Community Centre, The Sherbourne Health Centre, The Bloorview McMillian's Children's Centre- Spiral Garden Program, The Harbourfront Centre, The Latcham Gallery (Stouffville, Ontario), McGill University-Explorations Program (Montreal) and The Halton District School Board’s Inside Out LGBTQ Youth Conference.

Shira is the recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts Grant to Professional Writers, a Writers’ Reserve Grant (Insomniac Press) and an Individual Crafts Projects Grant from The Ontario Arts Council and is currently writing a graphic novel.