small + mighty
Silent Auction
Feature Wall
March 4–April 25, 2025
Abby Nowakowski, Alicia Udvari, Alyce Soulodre, Alyssa Vernon, Brian Hoad, Colton Fox, Chrissy Poitras, Emma Poley, Faten Nastas Mitwasi, Fiona McMillan, Géorgie Gagné, GHY Cheung, Haley Sarfeld, Jabra Mitwasi, Jill Glatt, Keira Sainsbury, Kellyann Marie, King-David Olajuwon, Kyle Topping, Lisa Leskien, Maevis Chamberlain, Monika Rosen, Morgan Wedderspoon, Saila McRae-Croskery, Shamara Peart, Sophia Herrington, Sumera Khan, and Sydney Hanson
For Union Gallery's 30th anniversary, friends of the gallery have created a collection of 8"x10" artworks that are on sale now through our small + mighty silent auction.
Proceeds will be split 50/50 between the artists and Union Gallery’s not-for-profit programming — supporting local artists’ paid exhibitions, artist residencies, workshops, performances, educational opportunities, and more.
Bid on your favourite work today! The auction closes Friday, April 25 at noon ET.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Abby Nowakowski is a queer interdisciplinary artist living and working in Central Frontenac. Through printmaking, illustration, and handpoke tattooing, they spread advocacy for care, share stories, and make space for radical softness. This block print is based on the American Goshawk that rarely frequents the skies above Abby’s chicken coop. Their scientific name is accipiter gentilis, which roughly translates into gentle hawk – fitting for this stealthy and graceful bird of prey.
abbynowakowski.com / @poorthingdesigns
Alicia Udvari (they/he/she) is an emerging multidisciplinary artist, currently living and working in Waterloo, Ontario. Through printmaking, textiles and illustration, they seek to create communal spaces and communicate shared experiences with a wider community. As a queer, mixed-race artist, Alicia attempts to reach with others that may share a sense of isolation in their identity, and form connections through their work. They received their BFAH from Queen’s University in 2023, and are constantly working toward their next creative endeavours.
aliciaudvari.blog / @licia.udvari
Alyce Soulodre (she/her) is a queer visual artist living in Katarokwi-Kingston, on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat. In her art practice, she mainly works in coloured pencil, watercolour, and acrylic gouache, and focuses on the weird and wonderful of the natural world and popular culture. She aims to share her love of the strange and unusual, and her appreciation for oft-neglected creatures. This piece features a quote by the late, legendary David Lynch, from Twin Peaks (2017).
Alyssa Vernon (she/her) is a Jamaican / Guyanese collage artist. A Queen's graduate with degrees in Gender Studies and Education, she's now a passionate Black and queer teacher integrating collage into education to blend creativity into learning. Alyssa is also Founder of the Queer Collage Collective, where she leads collage programming for learning, community building, healing, and strengthening mental health. Alyssa’s art centers on Black girlhood, (un)belonging, queer liberation, and community, drawing from Black histories to imagine liberatory Black futures while validating Black experiences, promoting healing, and fostering love. “Everything, For You”, a collage that centers Alyssa’s 3-year-old self, is a vibrant and layered representation of her personal reflections on Black girlhood, interweaving childhood nostalgia, curiosity, and growth to explore themes of innocence, resilience and self-discovery.
@butterscotch.queeen + @queercollagecollectives
Brian Hoad (he/him) is a visual artist originally from Port Hope, Ontario. After receiving training as late Canadian artist David Blackwood’s studio assistant, he completed academic training in studio art at Queen’s University (BFAH 2015) and University of Regina (MFA 2017). Maintaining his studio practice in Kingston, ON, Hoad is the Technician Supervisor and an Adjunct Instructor at the Fine Art (Visual Art) Program, as well as a PhD student (research creation) with the Department of Art History and Art Conservation at Queen’s University.
Hoad’s artwork responds to an interest in how people have connected with wilderness spaces throughout history. Technically intrigued by historic processes applied in contemporary contexts, printmaking has had the greatest influence on his practice while also working in painting and drawing.
Colton Fox is an artist, writer and comic creator. He made this piece immediately after almost dying during a blizzard when his car drifted toward a plow, like an unintentional game of chicken that he couldn’t run from.
coltonthefox.com / @coltonthefox
Chrissy Poitras is a multidisciplinary artist, an arts educator and co-owner and founder of Spark Box Studio- an arts organization based in Prince Edward County. She teaches at OCAD University and taught at Loyalist College in their Fine Art programs. She is a graduate from the Queen’s University Bachelor of Fine Art Studio program.
Her work spans traditional painting and printmaking, mural work, public installation, resource sharing and collaborative exchange. Themes of her work centre around ideas of place - whether that be through the invention of abstracted environments, creating augmented reality or highlighting the beauty of our natural landscape.
sparkboxstudio.com / @sparkboxstudio
Emma Poley is a Peterborough/Nogojiwanong born printmaker who is currently based in Kingston Ontario. She makes work that is dissective, analyzing the anatomical and what it means. For example to refrain from biting with our mouths and instead use soft words. She is interested in the archive - how in moments our bodies exist as animal and how we hold memories in our bones. She likes bones, teeth, horses, and learning to be gentle with large monsters. She learned how to be gentle with big things for the first time when she was 13 years old at horse camp somewhere in rural Ontario.
Faten Nastas Mitwasi is a Palestinian artist and curator, currently residing in katarokwi/Kingston Canada for pursuing PhD studies at Queen's University. In this artwork, she draws inspiration from Refaat Alareer’s phrase "To Tell My Story," printing it on the canvas to create the effect of traces. This symbolizes how his words echo in our hearts, haunt our souls, and urge us to share the stories of the innocent lives that were stolen—those who never had the chance to live or dream. The hand-crocheted anemones represent the wild field anemones that bloom each spring in Palestine, serving as a tribute to those who were killed. The anemones' color, tinged with red, reflects the blood of the martyrs, symbolizing the fragility and precariousness of their lives.
Fiona McMillan is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kingston, Ontario, currently working towards her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Queen’s University. As an oil painter & prose writer, Fiona enjoys connecting her personal lived experiences to her artwork. She hopes to eliminate the gap between art & artist, allowing her work to be a direct reflection of herself, and evolve as she does. In both her visual and written work, she explores themes of sexuality, gender, mental health, & mundane intimacy, and often overlaps the two creative disciplines of writing and painting.
Géorgie Gagné is a multi award-winning, mixed heritage Cree and franco-québécoise artist, educator, facilitator, and advocate, dedicated to infusing intersectional approaches, Indigenous ways of knowing, intentionality and care within communities around Turtle Island. Her art practice focuses on physical and digital collage, beadwork, photography, and graphic design. Géorgie's art aims to create audacious conversations on topics of 2Spirit identities, transness, interconnectivity, dignity, ruptures, and resilient love.
georgiegagne.ca / @georgiegagne.ca
GHY Cheung is a Hong Kong-born artist. His work attends to queer bodies in the built environment. Recent projects build on research into "wet places” to imagine queer architectural ornaments around variations on a 4-pointed star.
These lines of inquiry continue in this arrangement of visual references for queer codes and how things gather. Its disparate figures include tilings, cracked sidewalks and trails of fruit.
Haley Sarfeld (she/they) is a writer, singer, composer-lyricist, cruciverbalist, theatre critic, and Union Gallery’s Program Director. Her visual art and music-making have recently been stifled by mystery pain in her left wrist. She is trying to be a good sport about it, but Haley is not very athletic.
Jabra Mitwasi is a contemporary artist and current artist-in-residence at the Tett Centre in Kingston, Canada. He merges Arabic calligraphy with abstract expressionism, exploring language, culture, and emotion through vibrant colors and bold compositions.
This small painting features the Arabic word "حرية" (Freedom) as the central element, structured in an upward free letters formation to symbolize the ascension and boundless nature of freedom. The abstract contemporary style, with bright, energetic colors and expressive brushstrokes, embodies resilience and liberation. Layered textures enhance movement, reinforcing the idea of rising beyond constraints.
jabramitwasi.com / @jabraartstudio
Jill Glatt is a Katarokwi/Kingston-based natural dyer, printmaker, and teacher. Her practice focuses on issues of ecology, community, and sustainability, and aims to inspire people to observe a less extractive relationship with the Earth. Jill is also the volunteer coordinator for the Skeleton Park Arts Festival and sits on their board of directors as president. She enjoys walking around and picking up leaves along the way.
Keira Sainsbury is a Bachelor of Fine Arts student at Queen’s University, Class of 2025. Her work explores fleeting moments, memories, and the quiet beauty of overlooked spaces, often drawing from her deep connection to the outdoors. In this piece, she captures an abandoned gas station in Foley, Ontario—a place frozen in time, yet slowly reclaimed by nature. She is interested in the temporary nature of both places and memories and the delicate balance between decay and renewal.
Kellyann Marie is a queer transient responding to poverty and seeking a life in the in-between by creating pockets of home, through community, through sex work, and through honoring the ephemera found there. By celebrating the second hand (second hand in that there is a proverbial hand to hold in objects from having been held), they work to connect queer life-art-home-godliness. Navigating life in a tent spread from the Southern U.S to the jagged rocks on the island of Ktaqmkuk, Kellyann embraces oversharing and tenderness to honor the handmade skills that make life in poverty possible. The resulting work is paintings and textiles layered with personal narrative, meeting functional objects glorious in their usefulness –always centering the mark of the hand (to be thankful to have hands and that they would be so sweet as to leave a kiss on everything they might touch).
King-David Olajuwon is a self-taught photographer with three years of experience, capturing moments that blend elegance with deeper narratives. In this piece, a woman draped in white stands against a wall of green, lifting her hair to reveal a necklace of pearls. Grace and resilience intertwine—strength in stillness. Inspired by Pearls by Sade, the image echoes themes of endurance, beauty through struggle, and the delicate balance between fragility and fortitude.
thesunbeamng.com / @kingdavid.oa
Kyle Topping creates analog prints from digital collages, using diagrams and schematics. His goal is to blend draftsmanship with imaginative elements, exploring climate science and environmental impact. His work, rooted in environmentalism, delves into topics like depleting aquifers and endangered ecosystems, bridging science and art.
Lisa Leskien: “This painting was completed as a study for a larger work. The reference photo was taken during a race on the Bruce trail near Collingwood.”
lisaontheloose.com / @lisa.on.the.loose
Maevis Chamberlain is a bachelor of fine arts student at Queen's University in her final year. She is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus in oil painting. Her work comes from an interest in visually representing the strange worlds that we create as we sleep and dream.
Monika Rosen is a figurative and landscape painter based in Kingston, holding an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from Queen’s University. Working primarily in oil and fascinated by the relationship between the psyche and the landscape, her paintings navigate themes of vulnerability, transformation, and the rhythms of an interconnected ecosystem. Her work has been exhibited in international group shows, in solo exhibitions in Canada, and acquired for the collections of 21C Museum Hotels (US) and The Daniels Corporation (Toronto). Outside of painting, Monika illustrates (medical, children’s books), teaches, and sails on Lake Ontario.
monikarosen.com / facebook.com/monikarosenart / @monikarosenart
Morgan Wedderspoon (she/her) is a Katarokwi-Kingston based visual artist and a settler of Scottish-English descent. She maintains an arts practice in print media including book works, sculpture, installation, and participatory projects. Rooted in collection and observation practices throughout her urban environment, her work engages with the uneasiness of living in the ruins of late capitalism and the possibilities for collective change in the face of climate breakdown. She is a graduate of Queen’s University (2009) and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Alberta (2016). She is an educator and community arts advocate.
Saila McRae-Croskery: “I am a student in Queen's Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) program, completing my final year of studies this spring. For my honours capstone project, I employ surrealistic pairings of internal and external anatomy and human and non-human animals, with a particular interest in canids and other predator species. Symbolisms attached to natural subjects and animals—in both living and dead states—and pairing them with images of humanity, such as portraiture and figurative studies, reflect narratives of lived experiences with psychological disorders.”
Shamara Peart is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who lives in Katarokwi-Kingston. She is Jamaican-Canadian and uses she/they pronouns. Her poems have been published in Room Magazine, Acta Victoriana, and Arc Poetry among others. Currently, she works as the Juvenis Managing Director with Blue Canoe Theatrical Productions, where she organizes a ten-day arts festival that occurs in the Spring.
limestone is a short poem reflecting on the environmental and tangential relationships she's formed while living in Kingston. Their background in biology, creative writing, and theatre motivates them to consider how multiple systems interact with one another.
plantsandpoetry.ca / @plantsandpoetryy
Sophia Herrington is a fourth-year Fine Art student at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, currently completing her thesis work. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Sophia explores interdisciplinary methods in printmaking, drawing inspiration from nature, the passage of time, and the concept of journeys. Her work reflects her deep connection to the environment and the ever-changing rhythms of life. Gilded Arbor Dreams, created for the auction, is influenced by her thesis research and embodies her ongoing exploration of how art can bridge various mediums and convey complex narratives.
sherrington7243.wixsite.com/my-site / @sherringsketches
Sumera Khan is a professional painter and an art instructor from Kingston. She paints a variety of subjects including portraiture, plein air and still life. Through alla prima technique and impressionistic style of brushwork, she likes painting stories captured in time. She has been a recipient of grants by the Ontario Arts Council in 2024. This work is inspired by a space that provided an escapade from the busy life that existed beyond the windows. As the city lived on in the late hours, time stood still in a cozy nook amongst the books nestled quietly in a corner.
Sydney Hanson is a fourth year Fine Arts student specializing in painting and printmaking. Her work explores feminine themes, reflecting her personal experiences as well as her family history. She often employs a visual layering element in her art, through floral motifs which grow over her compositions. She is drawn to materials and imagery that are rooted in femininity and tradition, which she utilizes to question traditional values and gender dynamics. Her current thesis project further examines these themes, with lace playing a central role in her explorations.
THANKS + ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Union Gallery would like to thank the artists who contributed to this auction — all of whom have been involved with UG as artists, curators, staff, volunteers, members, and more over the past several years. We would not be the vibrant arts space we are today without you! (Note: artist bios and catalogue coming soon!)