About Me — Ashley Couto

I write about art, business, and the place on the venn diagram where they meet.

Photo credit: Kayla Mendez Photography

I really didn’t want to go to the stupid art museum, but I begrudgingly got in the car and huffed the entire way into the exhibit in a time-honored tradition of every 17-year-old who would rather not.

There are two things I take with me from that day:
1. The voice of the guard telling my dad not to get so close to the artwork
2. The head-to-toe electric buzz coursing through my body and the pounding of my heart

It’s been 17 years and thinking about it still gives me that same full-body buzz.

Opportunity comes in life’s detours

Life took me in a different direction than I’d planned. I was planning to become a curator.

Then I woke up one crisp October morning, freezing because I’d left my Toronto bedroom window open when I fell asleep with my laptop in my lap in bed the night before, and got up to get ready for class at York University.

I took a half a step before I fell to the ground and cried out in pain in my bedroom. My left hip was in 12/10 pain.