Alt Arts: She Said Gallery at Aspen Cleaners

A series of profiles, written by Ashley Diana Culver, highlighting alternative art spaces in Toronto and the people who make them.

Salma Ragheb, pietà X, 2025. Oil on paper, 12 × 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist and She Said Gallery.

There’s a woman in the laundromat. She’s wearing a zip-up grey hoodie with blue jeans and silver tabi ballet flats. The room is lined with washing machines and dryers that almost come up to her shoulders, each with a circular glass door like a portal, like a rocket that will take you to outer space. Except these machines are solidly grounded here in everyday life. They tumble and spin clothing and linens. When I wave through the glass door, her face lights up. She pushes her long, sandy blonde hair back. Her center part and white t-shirt are clean and anything but showy. 

Her name is Jyll Simmons. She is forty-three. Along with her boyfriend, Dan Ihnatowycz, she owns Aspen Cleaners at 384 Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto. Since the spring of 2022, Simmons has operated She Said Gallery within the space; although neither her name nor face appears on the gallery’s social media. Her personal Instagram account is private. The bio reads, “my name is jyll. i live in toronto. i like pastel colours, subcultural moral codes and squalid realism” and the profile picture is of her with a plastic bag loosely over her head, taken from the back. 

A gust of wind ruffles my coat as I open the door. After saying hello, Simmons and I lean on the tall table, useful for sorting socks. The grid of the place holds us, with suspended ceiling tiles above and ceramic floor tiles below—all beige, peppered with yellow fluorescent lights. Someone moves by to get a cart. 

Anji Woodley, Stewards of Thought opening, 2024-2025. Courtesy of the artist and She Said Gallery.

“I don’t identify as an artist,” Simmons says and tells me twice this afternoon how intimidating she finds the art world despite being a confident person. Scroll back to the early posts on She Said Gallery’s account, though, to find several photographs by Simmons, captioned with quotes from cultural icons, such as the musician, singer, and songwriter of Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon; or by  the novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, and translator Isaac Bashevis Singer. One from the photographer and activist Nan Goldin reads, “You are who you pretend to be.” 

We jaywalk across the street, quiet on a late Friday afternoon in January, and enter the cafe on the corner. We both order lattes with regular milk, which Simmons pays for, and settle on the bench outside, which is surprisingly comfortable this time of winter. 

On November 4, 2025, Simmons posted an open call for artists to exhibit at She Said Gallery in 2026. With her best friend and two computer screens with a spreadsheet, a calendar, and multiple direct messages open, Simmons combed through over a hundred applications. A month later, she confirmed the 48 exhibitions that will run this year, each for a week. 

Thanks to Simmons' day job as a Research Operations Manager at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), she has incredible administrative skills. This is helpful as she maintains the laundromat business, a full-time job, and raises two children while also running the gallery.

Angel Perez, Sonata n°1 (Daphne before meeting Apollo), 2024. Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist and She Said Gallery.

Simmons describes herself as a connector. This trait shone particularly in the early days of She Said Gallery. After she saw Ukrainian photographer Yevgeniy Kotenko’s series titled On the Bench (2007-2017) online, Simmons reached out to the artist. He sent her the entire series. She printed, framed, and hung the photographs along the wall above the washing machines in May 2022. The photographs were taken from the kitchen window of Kotenko’s parents' fourth-floor apartment and all show a public bench, made of two untreated planks of wood, that was painted cornflower blue and brick red over the decade. The work shows various moments of life occurring at this common place: couples chatting, pigeons, friends eating tomato with bread, a person slouched over a book, smokers, and a row of grey-haired men sitting with their legs crossed. Installed in a laundromat, it echoed the rhythms of everyday life that occur in shared space. 

Simmons then invited local artist friends, of whom she had many, to exhibit. In August, James Austin Hewitt, who ran the Run Gallery on Annette Street, exhibited a series of hand-drawn poster studies. Other artists who exhibited in the early years of the program include: Kat Caution, Dave Murray, Ben Wannamaker, and Peter Andrew in collaboration with Michelle Rabin. 

Seeing these artists make use of the laundromat to showcase their various mediums—collage, skateboards, drawing, and custom apparel—Simmons says, “It helped me to see the potential of space. It switched for me, before I was asking a favour [when inviting artists to exhibit], and then, now, I am providing an opportunity.”

Haley Axelrad, Fresh Cut Flowers In Each Room opening, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and She Said Gallery. 

Recently, filmmaker, musician, actor, multimedia artist, and broadcaster Sook-Yin Lee posted about the exhibition A KALMPLEX TING by Kalmplex, which was on view at She Said Gallery November 14-20, 2025. Simmons watched Lee as a Video Jockey (VJ) on MuchMusic in the 1990’s, so having her shout out the gallery and artist was an unexpected validation. All three, Kalmplex, Lee, and Simmons, exchanged multiple replies to the post with fire emoji, red heart emoji, flower bouquet emoji, and heart on fire emoji. Like Kotenko’s photographs in the very first exhibition at She Said Gallery, Kamplex's painted portraits are of people in his life, although the subjects are often closer in proximity and apparent familiarity than those on the bench. Everyone from family members to creatives to residents showed up to the opening of A KALMPLEX TING. 

Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, a small town with the tagline ‘The Heart of Muskoka’, Simmons moved to Toronto in 2001, after a six month adventure as a snow bunny out west that turned into living in a motel and serving fast food. 

“My twenties, and honestly a lot of my thirties, my life revolved around parties, after-hours, bars, clubs,” says Simmons. “I hated being at home. I loved meeting new people. Then the pandemic hit. When it ended, I was at the end of my thirties. Pregnant. Everything felt different. I wanted to still be me. I still wanted connection. I still wanted to meet new people. But I didn’t want my old scene anymore.”

kalmplex, A Kalmplex Ting, 2025. Exterior view of She Said Gallery at Aspen Cleaners. Courtesy of the artist and She Said Gallery.

Simmons tells me of a local gentleman, who she refers to by his first name: John, a legend of the Roncesvalles neighbourhood. Last summer, she wondered why she hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, only to hear he passed. John was a loyal laundromat customer and She Said Gallery attendee. Friday nights, he would be there with his wash and chat with the exhibiting artist–often young, emerging, sometimes at their very first solo exhibition. Simmons speaks fondly of John and how engaged he was. She notes she only just learned the term third place, which sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined in 1989 and describes in his book The Great Good Place as locations separate from home and workplaces that centre sociability. Simmons views She Said Gallery as exactly that and describes it as “somewhere you can show up, meet new people, gather around ideas. Around art.”

Before returning our mugs to the cafe counter, Simmons expressed how proud she is of She Said Gallery, how it’s created the next chapter for her. As if to balance this reflective moment, she lists tasks needing to be done, including getting a photograph taken of her at She Said Gallery in Aspen Cleaners. She knows plenty of photographers. She’ll consider it, she says as we say goodbye. Simmons is going to stop by the laundromat to say hello to the artist installing their work; it’s Friday after all. 

by Ashley Diana Culver

Ashley Diana Culver (b. 1986) is an artist and writer based in Tkaronto/Toronto.