Art Connects 2025/26
🎨🌿 Have you seen the new Art Connects mural at Gibson House Museum?
We invite you to visit and experience this beautiful new artwork by Indigenous artist Morgan of Waskwane Designs! Created in consultation with local community members, the mural celebrates Indigenous art, culture, creativity, and community, reflecting the voices, stories, and spirit of the community.
📍 Location: Gibson House Museum, 5172 Yonge St, North York
✨ Stop by, take a look, and experience the mural for yourself!
ABOUT ART CONNECTS
Art Connects is an ongoing initiative that started in 2019 to address North York Arts’ (NYA) role in Truth and Reconciliation. As North York Arts builds programs, partnerships, and relationships, we continue to ask ourselves: “As a non-Indigenous organization, what can we do to support the process of decolonization and build right relations with Indigenous communities?”
Through community engagement and collaboration, Art Connects creates opportunities to celebrate Indigenous creativity, culture, and connection while reflecting on the ongoing journey of Truth and Reconciliation.
We invite you to visit the mural, take a moment to engage with the artwork, and celebrate the power of art to connect communities. 🌿
Art Connects Community Mural 2026/27
Title: The Guiding Place
Designed by Morgan Morgan of Waskwane Designs
Learn more about Morgan
Morgan Kagesheongai is an Anishinaabe-Ojibwe from Whitefish River First Nation and a graduate of Seneca College’s Illustration program.
They live and work in the GTA as a multiple-disciplinary artist and workshop facilitator for a wide breadth of individual clientele and community led organizations. They animate short films, draw comics, make paintings, create murals and design for print and web.
As an Indigenous person, they aspire to bring their cultural understanding and historical knowledge into the forefront of their work, taking on projects that can act as a vehicle for their stories, practices and unique understanding.
Art Connects Community Mural 2023/24
Title: skyworld and beyond
Designed by Mo Thunder
Join us for the unveiling of skyworld and beyond! This is a collaborative mural piece created by Indigenous Artist Mo Thunder. During two interactive art-journalling workshops led by Mo, North York community members had the opportunity to contribute to the creative brainstorming process that inspired the artwork.
Art Connects is an ongoing initiative to address North York Arts’ role in Truth and Reconciliation. As North York Arts builds programs, partnerships, and relationships, we continue to ask ourselves “As a non-Indigenous organization, what can we do to support the process of decolonization and build the right relations with Indigenous communities?”
Learn more about Mo Thunder
Mo is a nonbinary/fluid, neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist and facilitator who grew up in a small town along the St. Clair River, they currently live in T’karonto, which has been home for over a decade. They are Haudenosaunee (Oneida Nation of the Thames), French-Canadian and Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang First Nation). Mo holds a BFA in studio art with a focus on drawing, silkscreen printing, photography and video from Fanshawe and Lethbridge University, however, they are also self and community-taught. In June 2022, Mo graduated from the Toronto Art Therapy Institute. Through their multidisciplinary art practice (painting, murals, mixed media, beading, journaling, poetry and textiles), they create visual stories about their lived experiences in connection to their personal healing. Mo is also inspired by intergenerational connections and healing, family and memories, personal and collective empowerment, and all of creation, especially skyworld.
Art Connects Community Mural 2022/23
Title: Two-Row Wampum Belt
Designed by Lindsey Lickers
In 2022, North York Arts hosted seven Indigenous talks about Treaty, the geography of North York, our responsibilities to Water and Land, and Indigenous Stewardship, Symbolism, and Art. This series was curated by Lindsey Lickers, and featured Jason Mercredi, Chyler Sewell & Daniel Rotsztain,Carolyn King, James Carpenter, & Raiden Levesque.
Inspired by these talks and teachings, community members and program participants were invited to come together to create a collaborative mural led and designed by lead artist Lindsey Lickers.
This piece depicts the Two Row Wampum, being restored in collaboration with the broader community, supported by the inclusion of participants’ visual responses to the truths shared within the Art Connects, I-Talks series. The wampum beads, stories, and commitments are framed by Lindsey’s stylized interpretation of spirit world above, with land and water below. Watch the mini-documentary below for a closer look into the creation of this project and mural.
Learn more about Lindsey
Lindsey Lickers is a Haudenosaunee/ Anishinaabe multi-media artist, arts facilitator, and program developer originally from Six Nations of the Grand River with ancestral roots to the Mississaugas of the Credit. Her traditional name is ‘Mushkiiki Nibi Kwe’, which translates to ‘Medicine Water Woman’ and she is of the turtle clan. Recently, she was awarded a commission to create a permanent public installation for the Region of Waterloo’s light rail transit system that will speak to the historical stewardship of the land base of Waterloo and the importance of agriculture from a First Nations perspective.
North York Arts is committed to continue working along Indigenous peoples to deepen our understanding and to bring truth to our programs.
In Partnership with The Gibson House Museum
