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Facing out onto Simcoe Place’s shopping concourse are a set of fourteen large windows designed by Barbara Astman. Her piece, Aurorea, is integrated within the surrounding architecture, complimenting the grey stonework around it nicely. To create the feeling of viewing an aura borealis, Astman sandblasted the frosted glass panels, leaving behind tiny flecks of clear glass to shine through as if snow squalls were being swept across a tundra.

Barbara Astman, a self-proclaimed feminist artist, specializes in a hybrid of photography and new media, often using her own body as object and subject. Merging art and technology is a major focus of her practice, resulting in images of remarkable colour, texture, and scale. Through her art, Astman hopes to define new ways of seeing. Apart from showing her work extensively in both solo and group exhibitions across North America, Astman has also completed commissions for public art installations in Canada and abroad, including travelling murals and inlaid flooring that were displayed at the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1987. More recently, she has created a large stained glass program, consisting of 217 windows with photo-based imagery, for the Murano Condominiums on Bay Street. In 2000, Astman was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy and in 2001, she became a professor at her alma mater, the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD University) where she continues to teach. An active member of the her local arts community, Astman is currently the Chair of Koffler Gallery’s Art Advisory Committee and Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto.