Event Details
📅 Date: November 19, 2025
🕔 Time: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
📍 Location: Simard Atrium and Room 129
Canapés and drinks will be served to elevate this artistic evening.
RSVP on Eventbrite to access the event.
Discover the artists of the SimArts 2025!
Exhibition's Date:
November 24, 2025, to September 1, 2026
Where can you find the works:
- Main hallway (Simard Hall, first floor)
- Hallway, Office of the Dean (Simard Hall, first floor)
- Julien Couture Resource Centre (Hamelin Hall, first floor)
Join us for an inspiring evening
This exhibition celebrates creativity and audacity within our artistic community. 4 awards will be presented that day:
- Jury’s Choice
- Dean’s Favourite
- Audience Award
- President’s Favourite
All winners will receive an award; however, the Jury's choice will receive the SimarArts 2025 Award. A one-week solo exhibition at Gallery 115, offering full use of the gallery to present their work or curate an exhibition of their choice.
The Selection Committee will be formed by:
- Joe Friday (uOttawa Common Law Alumnus, 1988): Joe practiced law in both the private and public sectors, most recently serving as Canada’s Commissioner of Public Sector Integrity from 2015 to 2023. He is an active and avid participant in the visual arts, both as a community builder and as a collector of contemporary art. He was the founding Chair of the Carleton University Art Gallery and is currently the Chair of the Hnatyshyn Foundation, Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, as well as the Vice-President of the Friends of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
- Grant A. Jameson (uOttawa Common Law Alumnus, 1974): Grant is a corporate director, consultant, and retired lawyer. He is known as a community leader dedicated to advancing causes that support 2SLGBTQ+ rights, health care, the arts, and corporate governance. Grant is currently serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ottawa Community Foundation and Corporate Secretary, and member of the Board of Governors of the National Trust for Canada. He co-established the Joe Friday and Grant Jameson Contemporary Art Fund at Carleton University.
- Scott Furgesson: An Ottawa-based painter exploring the edges of perception and the ways our senses distort, amplify, and invent. Trained in animation, he works as a painter, animator and was previously a professor of animation at Algonquin College. Ferguson’s paintings use exaggeration not as an effect, but as a way to reveal what’s already hidden inside experience – how it tends to bend past what’s “real.”
Working out of a converted 1950s school in Vanier, he builds paintings that sit between control and collapse, where technical precision meets sensory drift. His influences range from Max Ernst and Adrian Ghenie to Ottawa’s own restless scene. - Shawn Hunsdale: a community organizer, visual artist, researcher, and consultant in the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabe. His current research regards the range of practices in life drawing collectivities, both contemporary and historical. Shawn has seeded several drawing circles in British Columbia, Ontario, and Québec. Currently, he runs Atelier Denu and three other life drawing workshops in the National Capital Region. Aside from his artistic practice, Shawn has worked in progressive, membership-based organizations doing communications, management, and governance work. He is the chair of the biennial Figureworks prize and a board member of Arts Visuels de Gatineau.
The People’s Choice Award will be selected through voting on our website and social media channels. You can also vote here.