Milled Wood creates an intimate space within a busy setting. Off-cuts of 2×4 spruce were cut, sanded, and stained to reproduce an optical illusion of Mill Creek Ravine. The artist strove to immerse the viewer in a sensory experience – walking along trails wrapped by dense deciduous trees. Extensive mapping techniques were used to plan and organize the more than 8,400 wood ​“pixels”. Each tells its own story of time, place, and growth – the knots and rings are still visible through the stain. The mural’s construction also has an auditory effect — the different wall thicknesses create ​“sound pockets” within the space. To fully experience this artwork, it should be viewed with the naked eye and through a camera lens as you walk in front of it.

Destiny Swiderski

Destiny Swiderski (b. 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Métis Canadian artist who currently lives and works in Coombs, British Columbia. She is known for site-specific installation art that utilizes everyday materials that follow a precise algorithm.

Destiny Swiderski grew up north of Winnipeg in Selkirk, Manitoba. Her studies began at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 2002. Swiderski received her Bachelors of Environmental Design in Architecture in 2007. Her studies in Architecture led her to create architectural installations at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, ON. She has worked for Architecture and Urban Design firms in the west and is currently self-employed as she is embracing her career as a Public Artist.

Swiderski’s work uses everyday manufactured materials such as drinking straws, casino dice, and pieces of milled wood to create large scale sculptures that have a three dimensional quality. Her work involves using repetition of one material to explore its new characteristics when applied to an image. Her process is extracted from the landscape to the deep-rooted history that resides in that particular place. Capturing experience is the essence of all of her artworks.

Destiny’s experience working in Architecture has allowed her to be exposed to numerous clients, cultures, and places around Canada. Her extensive knowledge of materials and construction methods allow her to manage, consult, and construct large pieces of art for others to enjoy and interact with. These ideas all stream into how public art can be a vehicle for placemaking.

Reflecting the diversity of the Mill Woods community surrounding the Grey Nuns Hospital, Karen Ho Fatt Lee has created a band of motifs inspired by cultural textiles and patterns. The artwork draws on the language of clothing and traditional arts with the actual imagery derived from a community workshop and online submissions. The final design of _A Pattern Language_​includes 22 traditional folk and tribal motifs with cultural significance to ethnic groups from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The aligned motifs resemble a cloth border and are harmoniously arranged across a 53-foot-long aluminum structure. The repetition of various geometric and curvilinear motifs reflects the balance and diversity in the community. The artist hopes this piece will inspire passengers and local communities alike. The airy artwork raised on the canopy will uplift those taking the train and turn an everyday activity into a joyful experience.

Karen Ho Fatt Lee

Karen Ho Fatt Lee is a Canadian visual artist and designer working in two and three dimensional media. She is a graduate of the University of Manitoba. 

Lee has several colourful functional and artistic public art pieces within various jurisdictions in Alberta. Her public art practice refines and transforms common objects and iconography to best reflect a site’s context and unique dynamics. 

She lives in the beautiful foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which provide an endless source of inspiration.

_​If The Drumming Stops_​symbolically connects transit users to stories of the Papaschase Cree territory. It is the intention of the artists to give voice to the spirit of the language, land, histories and present realities of Indigenous peoples in what has become the current neighborhood of Mill Woods, but which was and will always be carried in the hearts of Papaschase descendants. Working within their interpretations of the protocol of being a guest in Papaschase territory, Morin and Willard invited Cheryl L’Hirondelle into this collaborative work that asserts the Papaschase Cree people’s belonging and histories within the matrix of the contemporary cultures, peoples and eco-systems of the Mill Woods neighborhood today. With this work, the artists show the complex interrelationship of the past and present, highlighting the historical injustice of the Papaschase Indian Reserve dispossession. The artwork juxtaposes archival images and drawings of the site’s original ecosystem and society with the modern, diverse community, allowing a commuter to look through the eye of the buffalo while standing within the glass transit shelter, for example. Cree syllabics featured on ​‘woodpecker-red’ glass share a traditional ​‘Wake-up Song’ in Cree, and the title of the work relates to historical accounts and current presence of the Papaschase community.

Peter Morin, Tania Willard & Cheryl L’Hirondelle

Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation and settler heritage, works within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard’s curatorial work includes the touring exhibition, Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012−2014), co-curated with Kathleen Ritter. In 2016 Willard received the Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art from the Hanatyshyn Foundation as well as a City of Vancouver Book Award for the catalogue for the exhibition Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Willard’s ongoing collaborative project BUSH gallery, is a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledges. Willard is an Assistant Professor at UBC Okanagan in Syilx territories and her current research intersects with land-based art practices.

Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist, curator, and writer. In his artistic practice and curatorial work, Morin’s practice-based research investigates the impact zones that occur when Indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism collide. This work is shaped by Tahltan Nation epistemological production and often takes on the form of performance interventions. In addition to his object making and performance-based practice, Morin has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery. In 2014, Peter was long-listed for the Sobey Art Prize. Morin is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Art at Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/​Halfbreed*; German/​Polish) is an interdisciplinary artist, singer/​songwriter and critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy wâskahikan (Edmonton, AB) and Kikino Métis Settlement, AB. Her work critically investigates and articulates a dynamism of nêhiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place with a practice that incorporates Indigenous language(s), audio, video, virtual reality, the olfactory, sewn objects, music and audience/​user participation to create immersive environments towards ​‘radical inclusion.’ As a songwriter, L’Hirondelle’s focus is on both sharing nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) and Indigenous and contemporary song-forms and personal narrative songwriting as methodologies toward ​‘sonic survivance.’ She has exhibited and performed widely, both nationally and internationally. L’Hirondelle is the recipient of two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005, 2006), and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006, 2007). Cheryl is also the CEO of Miyoh Music Inc., an Indigenous niche music publishing company and record label.

*different historical and contemporary terms for being a ​‘mixed-blood’ person are: Métis, Halfbreed, o‑tipeyimisiwak, askiy ohci iyiniwak and apihtawikosisanak

_​Encompass_​is nine large, round canvases that hang in the foyer of the Southeast Division Police Station. The imagery is derived from global culture and represents a wide range of art and craft including ceramic, glass, metal and fabric designs from international museums’ collections. For example, ​“Morocco” is based on an arabesque design in blue and white glaze in the British Museum’s study collection. The digitally manipulated designs were printed on canvas and over-painted in high quality artist’s paint. The paintings are displayed on a wall in the main lobby of the police station. The circular format echoes the curved architectural design elements of the building and the shape of the earth, both symbolically and metaphorically. Painted by Edmonton artist Allen Ball, the inspiration for the artwork is ​“derived from global culture and represent a wide range of art and craft practice.” He describes the Police Station as being ​“the centre of a complex, modern, multicultural community” and reflects this dynamic in his paintings.

Allen Ball

Allen Ball was born in London and received a First Class B. A. (Honours) Degree in Fine Art – Painting, with a Commendation in Printmaking, from Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1984, and an MVA in Painting, from the University of Alberta (supported by a Commonwealth Scholarship) in 1990.

Allen Ball is currently Associate Professor, Painting, and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. 

Over the past 20 years, his work has been grounded primarily in the practice of painting, interrogating the limits of its forms and extending the language of painting into an expanded field of inquiry. Recent projects include: ​“The Wordless Book and other sounds” (2010), a series of paintings that interrogates the associative power of colour through Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s nonverbal evangelical device the Wordless Book; ​“The German Autumn in Minor Spaces” (2008), a photographic and screen-based collaboration with Dr. Kimberly Mair (Department of Sociology, University of Lethbridge), pertaining to the ideological struggles of the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Gang; and, ​“Spectacle in a State of Exception” (2007), a multi-media project stemming from research conducted as an embedded official Canadian War Artist with Canadian Forces Operation Calumet in the Sinai Peninsula.

Loosely inspired by the children’s classic _​The Neverending Story_​, this art installation – a quiet study room – provides a deceptively large space for exploration and reading. Called _​Phantásien_​(Fantastica) the arrangement of mirrors produces the ​“infinity effect” of a double-mirror installation. The tinted, mirrored surfaces do not produce objective reflections but are influenced by the individual character of the coloured mirror(s). Back and forth, these colours are superimposed and lead to a gradual disappearance of the original image within the depth of the reflection space. The result is an endless amount of space for the reader‘s imagination and interpretation.

Realities:United

In 2000 the brothers Tim Edler and Jan Edler founded realities:united (realU), a studio for art, architecture and technology. realities:united develops and supports architectural solutions, usually incorporating new media and information technologies. The office provides consulting, planning, and research, also undertaking projects for clients such as museums, businesses, and other architectural firms.

One major focus of realities:united is architecture’s outward communicative capacity. Another is the quality of the user experience inside spaces, which in function and appearance is essentially augmented and changed by additional layers carrying information, media content and communication. Some of the studio’s projects resemble classical architectural work, but venture regularly into art, design, or technology research. Most projects are intended to serve as a catalyst in a given situation, and are therefore strongly determined by identifying, transforming, amplifying, and combining various existing potentials. In that sense the approach centres on taking advantage of available opportunities, rather than specific skills, procedures, or tasks. Although the majority of the projects incorporate new technologies or experimental approaches in one way or the other, the work always aims to affect actuality, not virtuality.

Strategic initiative and a high proportion of communication and mediation in work processes mark
many of the firm’s innovative projects. This approach creates the bridge between utopian ideas, abstract conceptions and realizations and has been recognized internationally. Currently realities:united is working on new projects in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Artist Erin Ross has created a series of landscapes that depict the terrain surrounding Edmonton. Wheat fields and prairie vistas enliven the slate grey wall of the new park pavilion.

Erin Ross

Erin Ross was born in 1983 in Edmonton, Alberta. She earned her Fine Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 2006, and has also studied Visual Communication Design at Medicine Hat College. She has had her work represented in commercial galleries since 2008. Erin has received public attention for her work, including the cover and a feature article in SEE magazine and a documentary segment on Alberta Primetime. She lives and works in Edmonton, with her studio located in the historic Great West Saddlery building on 104^th street.

Her illustrations have won ACE awards, a Communication Arts Award of excellence and inclusion in their Design Annual. She was also nominated as an emerging artist for the 25^th and 26^th Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts, and one of her pieces was short-listed for the inaugural CSCE Art Award, curated by Ryan Doherty of the SAAG, where she won the people’s choice award and a cash prize.

Erin is extremely engaged in her community. She has made it a real focus to advocate for the arts in Edmonton, not only through her board work, but also by volunteering her time to assist on creative projects. She has initiated and developed a brand new advocacy and fundraising approach in her role as chair of fundraising for Latitude 53, where she is in her second year as a board director, and as fundraising chair. She has volunteered for the EAC as well as M.A.D.E. Edmonton, and participated in various speaking engagements. 

She was recently a pecha kucha presenter at the Mayors Think Tank: Our Arts, Our City, and has worked with the cities Arts Visioning Committee. She believes in promoting art as a crucial social investment. She has demonstrated her commitment by giving back in several ways, whether it’s fundraising for the cities needy through her board work with the CTV Good Neighbour Fund, donating for auction to Latitude 53’s Fine Art of Schmoozy fundraiser in 2011 and 2012, Compassion house foundation, Leukemia and Lymphoma society of Canada, and many others. She is also a member of Artsscene Edmonton, where she was the co-chair for its reincarnation as a brand new board in 2011/2012.