Craft Ontario's Guide to the DesignTO 2025 Festival

Artwork in banner: Various works from Emovere by Carrie Perreault

January 24 - February 2, 2025

View the full 2025 Festival Schedule

This year Canada’s largest non-profit design festival - featuring over 100 events and exhibitions across Toronto - DesignTO will celebrate their 15th birthday! DesignTO has a reputation for showcasing designers and makers who are on the forefront of sustainable design, making work that questions the use of design and materials in our built environments, and how work can be made to elicit more joy through experiencing it. 

Craft Ontario’s current exhibition 'Void' by Chu Winnie Cheung, is a part of the festival’s 10-day schedule and we will be celebrating the festival and the exhibition at the Opening Reception on January 25, from 2-5PM (Join us!). There are so many shows and events to see in the festival, it is a feat to see it all! Follow Craft Ontario’s Guide to DesignTO below for a short list of shows and events which involve elements of craft prominently.

Note that most events and exhibitions are free, but some require an RSVP or purchased tickets. Click the title of each event/show for more information, including location and visiting hours!

From The Ground

Songshu Liu & Christina da Graça

280 King Street East, #100, Toronto, Jan 20–Feb 01, 2025

Exhibition

‘From the Ground’ is an art exhibit showcasing the work of OCADU students Christina da Graça and Songshu Liu, exploring woodworking and ceramics. This collection reflects their intimate connection with clay and wood. The exhibit invites viewers to engage with the tactile, elemental qualities of the works, celebrating the authenticity and strength found in the simplicity of the materials.

Beyond the Body

‘Beyond the Body’ by Pixel Heller focuses on traditional masquerade by transforming costumes into sculptural forms. The costumes are not only garments but act as abstract body-like extensions, blurring the lines between wearable art and sculpture. These pieces evoke the fluidity of masquerade while shifting the focus toward symbolism of rituals, cultural memory, and ancestral connections. By abstracting these costumes into sculptural works, Pixel seeks to convey the ways in which identity, memory, and the body are interconnected across time. The costumes, when worn, embody the physicality and presence of the performer. But when hung, they take on a life of their own as the sculptures evoke a sense of absence and presence, representing the continuum between the past and present.

Weaving the Fibreshed

Charlotte Little

818 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02, 2025

Window Installation

‘Weaving the Fibreshed’ is a textile design project completed as part of Charlotte Little’s ongoing MA thesis work at Toronto Metropolitan University. Engaging with the Fibreshed movement for localized textile and fashion systems, this work utilizes materials produced exclusively in Canada, including local wool dyed with locally foraged dye plants that has been handwoven in Toronto. The weaving brings together traditional practices and materials with radical sustainability the form of slow craft practices that exist within plural textile ecosystems.

Superposition

Shao-Chi Lin

1010 Queen Street West, Toronto, Jan 22–Feb 02, 2025

Window Installation

Shao-Chi Lin’s installation, ‘Superposition,’ presents a series of subtle textile sculptures that explore the physical phenomena of waves. Observing repetitious patterns can elicit both a sense of curiosity and familiarity. What other feelings and thoughts do wave patterns evoke? When reflecting on the principle of superposition in quantum science, particles in waves can exist in two different states at once. What we observe and perceive may be neither fixed nor definite; it can be more layered than our initial impressions. Lin’s curiosity lies beyond the scientific principles that are foundational to the work; she strives to understand the visceral responses that arise from engaging with wave patterns.

Material Practice at Harbourfront Centre

235 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Jan 25–Mar 30, 2025

Exhibition

Objects for Adaptation and Resilience (East Vitrines), Curated by Kate Tessier:

A collaborative exhibition between curator and current artists-in-residence at Harbourfront, presenting work responding to the ideas of adaptation and resilience.

Salvage (BIG Vitrine), Coolican & Company with Calla Haynes:

‘Salvage’ tells the story of a collaboration between Coolican & Company and textile designer Calla Haynes. Part material biography, part lesson in furniture anatomy, it communicates a shared commitment to sustainable design.

Amulet Baskets (South Vitrines), Laura Donefer, curated by Melanie Egan:

Laura Donefer is an exuberant and extraordinary individual who has created boundary-pushing work for over forty years. She is an inimitable force with a career that is a testament to the impact she has had on the glass community worldwide, whether as an artist, teacher, mentor, curator, organizer or advocate.

Lantern

The Goodman Studio

150 King Street East, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 21 2025

Window Installation

Located in the brand-new Keilhauer showroom in Toronto, Sylvia Lee of The Goodman Studio presents a captivating window installation for DesignTO that melds the soft glow of lanterns with the intricate charm of weaving and latticework. Inspired by traditional Asian lanterns, this installation reimagines light as both function and art, balancing warmth, simplicity, and refined craftsmanship.

Fables in Yarn

Alisa McRonald

570 Adelaide Street East, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 04 2025

Exhibition

‘Fables in Yarn’ is a collection of six hand-punched tapestries by Alisa McRonald that weave together the vibrancy of Scottish and Irish fairytales and folklore with the artist’s unique narratives. Each piece reflects a deep engagement with cultural stories while exploring personal intersections, inviting viewers to immerse themselves into a colourful tapestry that tells a story.

DesignTO Talks: Material Expressions

777 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Jan 26 2025, 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Event: Talk, in-person

Join DesignTO for an engaging presentation and discussion with glass artists Nadira Narine and Lauren Rice, whose projects ‘Chromatic Echoes’ and ‘Queer Connections’ explore identity, memory, and emotion. Through boldly coloured, expressive works in glass, Lauren and Nadira navigate community connections current and past, evoking nostalgia for what has been, and a celebration of what is.

Connections

Chloe Begg

180 Shaw Street, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 23, 2025

Exhibition

‘Connections’ by Chloe Begg is an exhibition presenting modular ceramic sculptures that explore various modes of connection. Each piece consists of multiple elements that fit together in unique ways, forming cohesive structures that encourage viewers to question what they see and to discover where balance and support lie within each form.

FORGIVENESS/RESENTMENT

Olivia Mae Sinclair

384 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02, 2025

Exhibition

Trauma-informed textile artist Olivia Mae Sinclair uses screen-printed linen and handwriting to explore forgiveness, self, devotion, and ritual.

Emovere

Carrie Perreault

405 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02 2025

Window Installation

‘Emovere’ is a sculptural series by Carrie Perreault consisting of unpolished plaster casts. The pieces are created by casting the negative spaces of HVAC duct registers, transitions, and connectors. Resembling archeological artifacts or plaque buildup, each cast evokes a sense of incompletion, like unbuilt spaces. The muted colours and imperfect moulds reflect the work’s connection to home and its emotional passage, inspired by the Latin root “emovere,” meaning to move through or out.

Cairns for Home

Vicky Pratt Becker

309 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02, 2025

Window Installation

A collection of stacked, hollow ceramic forms inspired by the ancient tradition of stacking stones. Made by Toronto-based ceramicist Vicky Pratt Becker of Vicky Makes Things. Stacking stones is a practice observed around the world and across time – whether as a form of wayfinding, meditation, devotion, or self-expression. It’s intuitive and relatable: the act of creating something out of the materials available and a way to interact with a found environment. Each ‘stone’ is hand-thrown on the pottery wheel and then manipulated and assembled.

Mapping Out Calm

Steph Cloutier

28 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02, 2025

Window Installation

‘Mapping Out Calm’ is a large-scale paper tapestry by Steph Cloutier that explores the impermanence of life through water. The hand-stitched paper tiles reveal a map of Lake Ontario’s evolution and resilience, and it offers a moment of reflection about our shared experience of transition and renewal. The tapestry is inspired by daily walks to the water’s edge, which are a source of comfort and a reminder of the constant change of the lake and the shoreline. The rippling lines in the tapestry resemble the waves of the water, but it also traces the historical expansion and erosion of the lake’s body. Based on archival drawings, the pattern reveals evidence of the rescinding lake body over the course of 150+ years.

About Time

28 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Jan 24–Feb 02 2025

Exhibition

Time affects all. Nature, materials, relationships, and even our own ideas succumb to its relentless pursuit. ‘About Time’ is a collaborative exhibition featuring the creative work of six 2021 Sheridan College Craft and Design alumni. The participant designers and craftspeople graduated from Sheridan Craft and Design at the height of the global pandemic and lost the opportunity to exhibit their final thesis work. ‘About Time’ displays a “then and now” narrative between the ideas explored in school and their development over time. How do our ideas hold up when time has passed, and the context has changed?

The 2025 DesignTO Festival will run from January 24 - February 2, 2025 and you can view the full 2025 Festival Schedule here!