Public Art

Ashley Beerdat 

 

Ashley Beerdat is a painter and muralist based in Toronto. She has a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Western University and her MFA from the University of Waterloo. Her work is held in Mississauga’s permanent corporate art collection and has been exhibited at KWAG gallery, Tom Thomson Gallery, The Body Shop Studios, Small Arms Inspection Building, Latitude 53, The Artist Project and Withrow common gallery. Passionate about public art, Ashley has painted murals for the city of Brampton, Mississauga, and Toronto.  Ashley was a recipient of the SHRCC Doctoral Fellowship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Walter Metzger Memorial Award. She has also received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Arts Council.

Tracey-Mae Chambers

Tracey-Mae Chambers is a Toronto-based artist and citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.

Working in large-scale fibre installation, her practice engages collective grief, decolonization, and care within public space.

Through immersive red yarn interventions, she activates museums, heritage sites, and civic environments as places of memory, disruption, and connection. Since 2021, she has led Hope and Healing Canada, a national series of over 100 site-specific installations foregrounding Indigenous presence within colonial institutions.

Currently Artist in Residence at Harbourfront Centre, she develops They Are Loved, responding to Canada’s opioid crisis after losing her son, Parker, inviting collective empathy and reflection.

Georgia Fullerton

Georgia Fullerton is a Jamaican Canadian multidisciplinary artist, expressive arts therapist, arts educator, and consultant based in Ontario's Durham Region. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from York University in 1991, having studied visual arts earlier at Red Deer College.
With over 30 years in the arts, Georgia shifted focus in 2010 after a personal trauma inspired her to train as a creative arts therapist at The CREATE Institute, completing her studies in 2016. This led to the launch of her small business, Just Georgia – Expressive Arts to Heal the Heart®, in 2013.
Her career is marked by several significant "firsts": she was the first Black female practicing visual artist appointed Board Director and Acquisitions and Collections Management Chair of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and the first artist-in-residence at Station Gallery, where she launched their "Art as Therapy" program. She also served as former Vice-President of OEATA (Ontario Expressive Arts Therapy Association).
Georgia actively collaborates with communities and organizations, sharing her expertise as an artist, curator, juror, educator, and therapeutic arts practitioner. In 2022, she secured a government grant for "The Bounce Black Project," an Art as Therapy program for African Caribbean Black community members living with HIV and AIDS, in partnership with the AIDS Committee of Durham Region.
She has created four major public art pieces since 2012, including "The Way Gone Made Clear" for the City of Pickering (unveiled July 2024) and "For the Win and the Wonder" for the new Scotiabank Arena permanent Art Collection (launched late 2023). In 2025, The Toronto Globe and Mail commissioned her for original art for The Art of Appleton Estate campaign. Her original artworks are also held in private international collections.
Georgia continues to explore healing through art, offering therapeutic workshops for institutions like the Durham District School Board, Ontario Shores Mental Health, and Durham College. She also facilitates the Create My ArtStory Online Wellbeing Network for arts in health professionals. Now, as the Associate Program Director for The CREATE Institute, Georgia continues her impactful work in art and healing.

Christina Leslie

Christina Leslie is a Toronto-based artist and independent curator whose lens-based practice engages decolonization, identity, migration, marginalization, and her West Indian heritage. Using experimental photography and text, she explores intersections of history, memory, and race to create layered visual narratives.

She holds a B.F.A. from OCAD University (2006) and an M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design (2022). She served as Interim Assistant Curator at the McMaster Museum of Art, where she curated the collection exhibition THE GREAT UNSEEN (May–Oct 2025).

Leslie has delivered artist talks at major institutions and conferences, including the SPE Conference in Philadelphia (2010), the Position as Desired symposium at the Royal Ontario Museum (2011), and the McMaster Museum of Art (2022, 2023). She was also a featured speaker at the Caribbean Art Meet-Up at the National Gallery West in Jamaica (2025).

Her recent series, Sugar Coat, earned critical acclaim from Ain’t Bad Magazine, Feature Shoot, and PetaPixel, and was exhibited at BAND Gallery with support from the Honda Canada Foundation (2023), RIT City Art Space in Rochester, NY (2023), and the Exposure Festival in Calgary (2024).

Her photographs have been shown internationally, including at GAMU (Prague), Oakland University (Michigan), the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada’s Pier 21, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Caribbean Art Fair (Jamaica), the McMaster Museum of Art, Paris Photo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include Likkle Acts at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (2024–25), Pinhole Portraits and Places at Stephen Bulger Gallery (2025), and Sugar Coat at the Ottawa School of Art (2025).

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Wedge Collection, the Art Gallery of Ontario, TD Bank, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and the McMaster Museum of Art. 

She is a 2026 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Award finalist award recipient and currently has a public artwork on view at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery through March 2026. 

Leslie is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Nico Taylor

Nicole “Nico” Taylor is a performance and digital artist, curator, and scholar who holds a Masters of Arts from Concordia University. As a trained performer in Afro-Caribbean folk dance with over 20 years of experience, Nico has participated in many events showcasing the beauty and vibrancy of Caribbean culture, which included performing in the Opening Ceremony for the Pan Am Games Toronto in 2015.

Nico is a founding co-lead and collaborative member of Oddside Arts, a Toronto-based cultural arts organization, a Toronto-based cultural arts organization that creates immersive, community-engaged projects using design, technology, and public art to explore cultural memory within the African diaspora. Throughout the last several years, Oddside Arts has dedicated itself to creating artistic inclusive spaces, offering free skill-building STEAM workshops, and collaborating with artists and community entities across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to develop such things as mixed-media exhibits, augmented reality murals, and contribute to municipal public art initiatives.