Cheryl Wilson-Smith: Walking in Margaret’s Garden

Walking in Margaret’s Garden is an installation of 191 glass sculptures hand-formed by artist, Cheryl Wilson-Smith. Suspended in the atrium of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG), this playful installation transforms the natural light that defines the space into bright, colorful shadows. As a celebration of the RMG’s 60^th Anniversary, Wilson-Smith invites us to reflect on the expressive qualities of abstraction, and the significance of the RMG Permanent Collection.

The installation is inspired by an abstract painting in the RMG Permanent Collection. Garden was painted in 1958 by Alexandra Luke (née Margaret Alexandra Luke), a member of Painters Eleven and founding member of the RMG. Wilson-Smith’s installation, Walking in Margaret’s Garden, takes as inspiration the deep reds, cornflower blues, and bright turquoises of Luke’s painting, translating these colors into glass. Each glass tile was made by Wilson-Smith at her studio in Red Lake, ON. The tiles were draped over clay molds to create their convex shape, then fired in electric kilns. The installation is arranged in the atrium in cascading layers, emulating the rhythm and texture of Luke’s painting.

As Cheryl Wilson-Smith states: “Margaret Alexandra Luke understood that colour was not decoration, it was feeling made visible.” Walking in Margaret’s Garden celebrates light, energy, and colour. Viewers are invited to walk through the shadows beneath the installation, and are encouraged to return to the gallery at varying times of day to see how light transforms the work.

Artist Bio
Cheryl Wilson-Smith is a glass artist based in Red Lake, Ontario, in the middle of the boreal forest, where the highway ends. With over thirty years of professional experience, Wilson-Smith’s work is energized by the exchange between glass and the people who encounter it. The artist explores glass as a material that carries time and memory, creating a relationship between the environment and the human condition.

Wilson-Smith has been fortunate to hold residencies at Sheridan College, the Corning Museum of Glass, as well as residencies in Norway and Scotland. She is a recipient of the RBC Award for glass and the Chalmers Arts Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the US and Canada, and was recently shown in Scotland and England. Locally, her work can be seen at Oeno Gallery, in Picton ON.

Wellness Wednesday: Yoga With Chantal

Take a moment to breathe and connect during Yoga with Chantal at the RMG. This is a 4-week 1 hour Wellness Wednesday movement series.

Chantal is an Oshawa-based, certified Hatha, Yin and Gentle Yoga Instructor dedicated to promoting community wellness through movement, breathwork and relaxation. She holds undergraduate degrees in both psychology and physiology, and a Master’s degree in counseling psychology. As a former youth counsellor and employment coach, Chantal has over 15 years of experience supporting diverse populations as they explore and actualize their personal and professional goals. She’s chosen to share her love of yoga as part of the RMG’s Wellness Wednesday initiative as it has been central to her own health and well-being journey.

Requirements for the classes: Attendees only need to bring a yoga mat and a water bottle. They should also wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothes. They don’t need special yoga clothes. Open to all ages.

Class dates and time: Wednesday, October 14, 21, 28 and November 4 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM.

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Wellness Wednesday: Energy at Work: Creating Conditions for Yourself and Others to Thrive With Jessica Macri

Wellness Wednesday Workshop by Jessica Macri founder of Momentum Learning Company

Work can be energizing, challenging, exciting, demanding, and everything in between. The way we prioritize, respond to challenges, communicate, and interact with others shapes not only our own experience at work, but the experience of the people around us.

This interactive session will help you step back from the day-to-day, look at where your energy and attention are going, and identify where you have the greatest opportunity to make a difference. Through practical frameworks, reflection, and conversation, you’ll explore how to protect your capacity, focus your effort where it matters most, and contribute to a workplace where people can do their best work.

Participants will:

Recognize the everyday factors that influence their energy, focus, and capacity at work.
Identify where they may be spending energy on things outside their control and where they can redirect their attention toward what they can control or influence.
Explore how everyday communication, reactions, and behaviours can create clarity and momentum or contribute to friction for themselves and others.
Apply practical strategies to protect their capacity, focus their effort, and navigate challenging workplace situations more effectively.
Leave with one concrete action they can put into practice immediately in their own work.

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About Momentum Learning Company

Momentum Learning Company is a learning and leadership development company that helps organizations build the skills, behaviours, and workplace practices that enable people and teams to thrive. Through interactive workshops, keynotes, facilitation, and learning consulting, Momentum brings practical learning to topics such as leadership, communication, workplace culture, adaptability, and the human skills needed to navigate a changing world.

Momentum is led by Jessica Macri, a learning consultant and facilitator with experience designing and delivering national learning strategies for organizations and leaders across Canada. Her approach combines practical tools, meaningful conversation, and reflection to help people turn ideas into action.

Yongzhen Li: RBC Emerging Artist Residency Exhibition

During his residency, Yongzhen Li will create new work that explores the impact of social power structures and cultural heritage on the formation of personal identity through the expressive medium of Chinese ink painting and drawing. Drawing on motifs from past work, the artist will produce a long, panoramic handscroll using ink and mugwort dye. He will also develop a 2D animation in collaboration with colleagues from the animation program at Durham College. Combining traditional and contemporary techniques, this storytelling project is inspired by the deep connections between the past and present.

Artist Bio: Yongzhen Li is an emerging artist based in Oshawa. Trained at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and self-taught in contemporary practices, he merges traditional Chinese ink and mugwort dye with a modern sensibility to examine identity, memory, and resistance. His work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Art Market at the Carrousel du Louvre (2024) and at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery (Vancouver, 2026). Li is committed to public engagement through community-based art and educational initiatives.

Nightfall Concert + Exhibition Opening

Come out to celebrate the opening of Nightfall, a group exhibition featuring work by Megan Arnold, Shannon Garden-Smith, Ness Lee, Shelley Niro, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Brenda Mabel Reid, and Noelle Wharton-Ayer. Light refreshments will be served, and a cash bar will be offered. All are welcome!

At 4:30pm, some of the artists will join the exhibition’s curator, Hannah Keating, in an informal tour of the exhibition, which will be followed by a musical performance with Fittonia at 6pm. Seating will be provided.

Fittonia is a Peterborough, Ontario based collective who perform “little songs of the spirit” by songwriter Shannon Culkeen. Incorporating elements of traditional folk, contemporary songwriting, Appalachian devotional music, sacred harp singing, traditional gaelic music, mediaeval plainsong, and drone, Fittonia’s music is about redemption in ecological ruin, meditations on courage and virtue, and the challenge of knowing that death is coming. Culkeen, a nurse and frontline addictions worker, is no stranger to these themes and composes her music from a startlingly candid first-person perspective informed by lived experience, accompanied by a conspicuous sense of wonder and humility.

This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Brigitte at [email protected].

IMAX Panel Discussion with Canadian Astronaut Roberta Bondar

Still from Oliver Husain, MAXI (2026), double screen video, 17 min; cinematographer: Eva Kolcze, Khanh Tudo.

Join us for a virtual panel discussion on the history and future of IMAX cinema with special guest, astronaut Dr. Roberta Bondar. Dr Bondar will share her experiences with IMAX filmmaking in space, and how it continues to influence her work as a photographer and environmental advocate. Our panel will consist of scholars Janine Marchessault, Jessica Mulvogue, Allison Whitney, and artist Oliver Husain, whose exhibition I <3 Snail, on display at the gallery, draws on similar themes to the panel.

This event will also mark the publication of a special issue of the journal Feminist Media Histories on “Women of IMAX,” which investigates the transformative work of women as film directors, producers, museum managers, technical writers, and computing experts in the medium’s nearly fifty-year history.

This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].

Registration is required.

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Panelist Bios:

Dr. Roberta Bondar is a neurologist, physician, photographer, and Canada’s first female astronaut. She participated in the production of the IMAX film Destiny in Space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, Mission STS-42. She is a leader in space medicine research, and through the Roberta Bondar Foundation she fosters initiatives that merge scientific and artistic practice to support environmental education and protection.

Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain is based in Toronto. His projects are often collaborations with other artists and friends; and often begin with a fragment of history, a rumour, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages, technical experiments and visual pleasures — such as dance, puppetry, costume, special effects — to animate his research and fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups.

Janine Marchessault is Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is the Principal Investigator for[DH1] Locating Transnational Collaborations in the Early History of Imax Films and Architectures (1970–1990), imax-history.ca/. She is also the commissioner for XL Outer Worlds, culminating in the production of five experimental IMAX films by Canadian artists to celebrate the invention of IMAX, www.xlouterworlds.ca/.

Jessica Mulvogue is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews (Scotland) and a member of the research team Locating Transnational Collaborations in the Early History of Imax Films and Architectures (1970-1990), imax-history.ca/. She is the coeditor of The Interactive Documentary in Canada (McGill-Queens University Press, 2024) and Cinematic Ecosystems: Screen Encounters with More Than Humans in the Era of Environmental Crisis (Vernon Press, 2025). She has published work on eco-cinema, artists’ moving image, and documentary film in Studies in World Cinema, Transformations Journal, and various edited collections.

Allison Whitney is the 2026-27 Fulbright Canada Distinguished Chair in Arts and Social Sciences in Canada and North America at Carleton University, and a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Texas Tech University. Her research is on the history of film technology, with expertise in IMAX and 3D cinema. Her publications on IMAX address topics including space exploration, IMAX in science fiction and horror cinema, and the films of Christopher Nolan.

Bringing the Art Collection to Life

Learn about the history of how The Robert McLaughlin Gallery came to be, with a particular focus on the permanent art collection. With now over 4,700 works of art, Curator of Collections, Sonya Jones, will share stories about key works in the RMG’s collection. Storytelling forges connections between people and ideas, making it a powerful and effective tool in talking about art. Jones will share stories that bring new meaning and appreciation to the artwork in the gallery’s collection, that are both interesting and entertaining. Taking place Tuesday, September 15 at 6 PM.

LOCATION: The Speaker Series will be held at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, located at 72 Queen Street.

The Local History Speaker Series is an event presented in partnership between the Oshawa Historical Society and the Oshawa Public Libraries.

Teen Art Zone Fall 2026

Come hang out at the art gallery!

These sessions offer a welcoming space for teens to express their individuality, share new ideas, and try out a variety of art materials in a low-pressure environment. With a new theme each month, they’ll discover new ways to unleash their creativity, whether it be through painting, sculpting, mixed media or something else. Projects are based on the interest of the class, and current art trends.

Free
Ages 13-17
Registration required

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Upcoming Sessions

6 PM to 7:30 PM on select Wednesdays:

Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Wednesday, November 18, 2026
Wednesday, December 16, 2026

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FAQ

What is the environment like?
You are encouraged to either come alone or with friends! Plug into your own music or listen to the chatter. Materials and refreshments are provided.

We tend to keep the lights dimmed but they are still on. We play music on a medium volume, however this can be turned off upon request. The noise level in the room is about medium.

For more details on accessibility, visit this link: https://rmg.on.ca/visit/accessibility-and-accommodations/

Where is it happening?
The studio on the lower level. The gallery is free to visit.

Walk in through the front doors, turn right and go down the stairs, turn right again and you will see the doors to the studio. Or, take the elevator near our gift shop to level 1 and go through the hallway to the studio.

Do I need to know how to do art ahead of time? Do I need to be an artist?
No! The art activities are beginner friendly. We offer all the necessary materials and instruction to complete a project. We also value abstract art, ugly art, and silly art. It’s a great way to test new materials and imagine new ideas in a welcoming environment.

How do I contact the organizer?
Email [email protected] or call (905) 576-3000 ext. 108

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Family Sunday: Dawn and Dusk

This month we are inspired by our current exhibition Nightfall. This exhibition is motivated by the question: what opportunities are available to us at the threshold into night? How can we sense the world differently, turn inward, seek shelter with one another, and dream? Learn more here.

In the studio, we will decorate lanterns that glow. Working with silhouettes and negative space, let’s scrape our designs into the lanterns leaving a shimmering silhouette to enjoy when the sun sets for the night.

In the lookout, we will collage a sleepy-time animal resting in their bed for the night. Weaving a quilt for them, and collaging each part of them, they will be cozy and tucked in warmly.

Suitable for ages 3+
Adult supervision is required in all gallery/ studio spaces.
Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

Family Sunday: Everyday Matters

This month, take inspiration from the current exhibition Everyday Matters, a permanent collection exhibition about the things we see daily, that some may call ordinary. But there’s beauty in our world, even in the average things we see all the time!

In the studio, we will get messy with gelli-plate printing techniques using real preserved leaves. Our works of art will showcase nature’s details and unique differences.

In the lobby, we will use markers and watercolour pencil crayons to draw still-life objects. We will make messy contour drawings with our markers, colour them in, then spread water on our creations to bring them to life as our colours turn to paint.

Suitable for ages 3+
Adult supervision is required in all gallery/ studio spaces.
Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.