Our Mission
Spare Room is a safe and inclusive studio space for artists in Barrie and Simcoe County to gather and foster artistic collaboration within the local art community. Our gallery welcomes all genders, abilities, cultures and sexualities to participate in workshops, exhibits, and events.
Organizers
Katie Green
Katie is a local Barrie artist with a passion for community and bringing art into all areas of life. This includes making beautiful useful objects like t-shirts or handkerchiefs, public art like murals, co-running a shared artist studio space and teaching workshops. Her art practice is centred around placemaking, both in the community/physical geography as well as in ourselves. She operates from the idea that art is an experience that can positively impact people’s everyday lives. She works in many mediums including pen and ink, watercolour, printmaking and textiles. Katie pushes the boundaries between one medium and another offering useful design and decorative or conceptual art. Her work is playful with a sense of whimsy and often features hot pink.
Omar Canales-Cisneros
Omar Chris Canales-Cisneros is a Barrie-based painter of Salvadorian descent. He graduated from OCAD University in 2023, majoring in Drawing and Painting with a minor in Sculpture and Installation. His practice is primarily based in painting and expands into sculpture and installation. As a Latin American man, Canales' work is concerned with exploring issues of identity, which entails heritage, sexuality, gender, and, most importantly, the intersectionality of these fields. His practice implements the artistic methodology of decreation by burning materials that are representative of prejudicial ideologies and incorporating the resulting ashes into a final body of work, using the ashes as pigment for oil paint.