FORMER IMMIGRANT ARTS CENTRE STUDENT NOW MARVEL MOVIES ARTIST

Abe Taraky lives thousands of miles away in California, but his thoughts aren’t far from his Hamilton home. His mother, Marufa Shinwari says iArt, the Immigrant Culture and Art Association’s new gallery/studio that’s about to open exists because Abe bought an old building for the association, founded by his father Yar Takary, to survive and thrive. Abe, 26, is a senior concept artist with Luma Pictures. He’s worked mostly on the Marvel-related projects, doing a lot of work on “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Ant-man.” Since last November, he’s worked on the movies “Deadpool,” now in theatres, and “Captain America: Civil War” and “Dr. Strange,” both scheduled for release later this year. He also worked on one a Super Bowl commercial this year. “You’re creating the ideas you see on screen,” he says of his work. “I love it. I get to draw for a living.” His name is in the movie credits, “but with these big films, there’s a huge team.” Born in Afghanistan, Abe (he shortened it from Abdullah) came to Canada with his family when he was eight by way of Uzbekistan, where the family first fled. Abe says although his dad is a professional artist, “I never took it seriously until my parents enrolled me in a class at ICAA.” He took art classes every Saturday after that. Drawing became his passion, but his parents at first insisted he pursue an engineering degree after high school at Westmount. “My husband has always said art will not put food on the table,” says Shinwari. Abe agreed to go into engineering but told her he was still going to Sheridan College afterward to take animation. Seeing his dedication, she relented. Abe went to Sheridan and developed an interest in concept art where “you’re working in the conceptual development stage. You’re sketching and making variations of your design.” But concept art, a form of illustration used to convey an idea before it is put into the final product, was relatively new at the time, so he chose to go into animation, the next closest thing. While at Sheridan, he interned at a gaming company called SpinPunch, in Palo Alto, Calif. He started his career in the gaming industry after graduating. “I was fortunate to be offered a position at Gameloft in Toronto as a lead concept artist working on video games…,” he says. After Gameloft, he moved to Quebec City to be closer to a bigger gaming hub and worked for Beenox. But he missed living in a bigger city and soon moved to Montreal to become senior concept artist with Warner Brothers there. Then, friends in California told him of an opening at Luma Pictures, where he is now. He tries to visit Hamilton, where the ICAA was so influential in his life, as often as he can. “It’s a really important thing to preserve.”