Staff and Board of Directors
Yuri Arajs
Staff
Director and Curator
Yuri is a working artist who has dedicated much of his practice to advocating for fellow artists, including artists who live with a disability. He has founded and run a number of arts organizations and art galleries in the US and in Canada over the last 20 years, including as former Gallery Director of Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts and Outsiders and Others in Minneapolis; as former Artistic Director of Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture in Vancouver, BC, and now Managing and Artistic Director of Outsiders and Others Art Society in Vancouver, BC.
His advocacy in the arts community focuses on working with, showing, and facilitating public exposure and financial compensation for self-taught and non-traditional artists.
Yuri has been recognized by the press and received numerous awards for his arts advocacy and promotion, as well as for his curatorial work as a gallerist, and was named most influential curator by the Minnesota Monthly in 2008. Yuri is also an accomplished artist, holding three degrees, including a Masters of Fine Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work is in both private and public collections.
Ali Ledgerwood
Board of Directors
President
Ali Ledgerwood is a Vancouver based Producer, with over 20 years experience in supporting the arts.
She has travelled North America promoting and curating photography exhibits as Executive Director for the News Photographers Association of Canada, a not-for-profit organization supporting visual journalists. She has published 17 books on the best of Canadian photojournalism, and continues to support ethical journalism and ensuring that photographers are properly compensated.
Ali is also a co-founder of ARThanks, a community program for artists donating their works to front line workers to acknowledge their amazing work during the height of the pandemic.
Most recently, Ali produced a rock show comprised of 11 bands with 32 artists including greats such as Bill Henderson of Chilliwack and Mike Reno of Loverboy to name a few, as a fundraiser for the BC Cancer Foundation and was able to raise over $320,000 for the cause.
Ali continues to fight for the underdog along with her two small cats with extremely large attitudes.
Andrea Petrini
Board of Directors
Vice President
Andrea is an artist whose work combines found textiles, used fabrics—old dish towels, mattress ticking, flour sacs, felt, or materials of her own making with stitching, drawing, sewing and other media. The textiles she uses often hold an inherent memory or context of the domestic or the familiar, and offer their own language of history, abstract patterns, rips, tears, stains and other signs of wear and decay, which she then approaches as a canvas. These are cues to begin a communication of sorts with the textile. She responds intuitively to those marks—adding, building, visibly mending, taking away, weaving into, darning, often ‘fixing’ while further destructing—as a non-verbal conversation emerges.
She finds inspiration in many things, among them, minimalist art, modern art, historic sewing samplers, weaving, fiber arts and tactile media, pattern and fabrics, darning and mending, classical Indian miniature painting and Rajasthani tantric paintings, which are highly abstract paintings with an ancient symbolic and sacred-geometric lexicon, created for purposes of meditation.
Andrea has a 20+ year career in the field of Development for cultural institutions and currently serves as the Director of Institutional Giving and Government Affairs at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. She resides in Brooklyn, New York.
“Having worked with Yuri in many capacities for over 30 years and witnessing firsthand his incredible work with the Outside art community in Minneapolis, Minnesota and now, Canada, I am honored to be the enthusiastic VP of the board of Outsiders and Others Society, Vancouver.”
Suzy Sabla
Board of Directors
Member at Large
Suzy Sabla is an art advisor, writer, and curator, and the CEO of Art Novel, a limited edition fine art print publishing house based in Vancouver, BC. With a decade of experience collaborating with international artists, collectors, and galleries, her expertise spans multiple disciplines. Her true passion lies in writing and vision development in the arts and beyond.
Suzy dedicates herself to nurturing artists' careers and helping them to achieve their professional goals. She offers comprehensive guidance, from crafting and curating portfolios to developing project proposals and preparing grant applications. With a deep appreciation for contemporary art, Suzy's art advisory role seamlessly combines her love for the creative process and her commitment to client collaboration.
Suzy splits her time between Vancouver, New York City and various global destinations, avidly exploring art fairs and galleries to uncover the most exceptional artists and experiences, and building upon her creative network.
Suzy, a first-generation Canadian with Central European roots, nurtures a profound connection to outsider art, inspired by her early exposure to Slovakian folklore, painting, and ceramics. As an ardent art collector, her walls proudly display a diverse collection of works from untrained and eclectic artists spanning the globe.
Caroline Neufeld
Board of Directors
Member at Large
My background was in Government Relations for many years both in Winnipeg and in Vancouver. More recently, I worked in television Research and writing. In addition to City Building and Community Development, I’ve always had a passion for the Arts.
I have lived in the vibrant, diverse and wonderful community of Strathcona, Vancouver for more than 14 years and am very active in my community, with the Residents Association, the Strathcona Community Garden, and our local Food Security Program.
In my career, I have worked with a variety of non-profit and for profit agencies including:
Evergreen Brick Works (Toronto), Project for Public Spaces (New York), GRB Television, (Los Angeles), and locally with Eastside Arts, ACCESS (Aboriginal Community Career Employment Services Society), Simon Fraser University, Holborn Properties Ltd., Taurean Global Properties, K Holdings Inc., Firelight TV Inc., Affiliated Computer Services Inc., Alliance for Arts and Culture, and Westbank Development.
While in Winnipeg, I served on the Boards of the West End Cultural Centre, The Winnipeg Arts Council, Partners in the Park, and Jazz Winnipeg. In Vancouver, I served as Chair of the Indian Summer Arts Society for 5 years. I am currently Co-Chair of the Strathcona Community Gardens Society.
Carl Baird
Board of Directors
Member at Large
Carl makes paintings, drawings, music performances and media art. By using popular themes such as sexuality, violence and urbanity. Baird focuses on the idea of 'public space' and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at a given moment: the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting.
His paintings often refer to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. By emphasizing aesthetics, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exists to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life. His works are often about contact with architecture and basic living elements, space and landscape are examined and sometimes developed on reclaimed boards from the urban environment.
www.instagram.com/artist_carl_baird
“The reason I wished to be a part of the Board of Directors is that I see an opportunity to help my community, the art community, and establish networking and educational opportunities to further myself. Through my education and experience at this point being on the Board is an opportunity and an honor to give back to this community.”