_​Holyrood Lanterns_​distills the colours and textures that make up the Holyrood neighbourhood into a large-scale community-engaged artwork. The finished artwork, a series of tessellated pentagons, will impart a mosaic effect. The panels and patterns will be created through a series of community workshops. The artist intends to transform the transit shelters into four colourful and beautiful lanterns that reflect Holyrood’s diverse makeup.

Adad Hannah

Adad Hannah lives and works between Vancouver and Montréal. His artwork investigates the way photographic moment is performed for a camera and his works often take the form of video-recorded tableaux vivants, photographs, and sculptures. He has produced community-engaged collaborative projects for museums around the world, and his works have been exhibited and collected widely.

Hannah’s artworks can be found in the permanent collections of many institutions including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON), Musée Rodin (Paris), Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), Samsung LEEUM Museum (Seoul), San Antonio Museum of Art, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and many others.

Helios is an inflated sculpture suspended from the ceiling of the Churchill Connector station. It consists of three white horses inspired by depictions of Helios, the personification of the sun god who daily races his fiery chariot across the sky. The horses will be made of a coated polyester material that will glow in the sun and change throughout the day with the shifting light.

Max Streicher

Originally from Olds, Max Streicher studied at the University of Alberta before moving to Toronto, 

An installation artist and sculptor, Streicher has worked extensively with inflatable technology in kinetic
sculptures and installation works since 1989. He has shown works in solo shows across Canada and internationally. His works are in collections such the ESSL Museum, (Vienna), and Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton.

He is a founding member of the NetherMind collective and is represented by several galleries around the world.

_​Of Birds and Such_​marries the past with the present by looking at habitats that formerly surrounded these current bus shelters. The many species depicted here are from the local landscape, some of which are endangered. These contemporary dioramas remind us of the dioramas of flora and fauna that were popular in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that originated with the birth of conservation movements who were disturbed by the increasing loss of nature. Today we face an even greater crisis with the disappearance of over seventy percent of our species. Public Studio created these tableaux to both share our concern for the current state of the planet due to humanity’s impact on nature and offer a moment of reflection on the beauty of the natural world that was once here and that can still be found if we work to preserve it. These dioramas were made together with many members of the Strathearn and Edmonton community including several wildlife photographers and landscape backdrops by painter Igor Woroniuk, and with research and information support provided by the Edmonton Area Land Trust (EALT). With thanks to collaborators: landscape painter, Igor Woroniuk. Wildlife photographers: Gerald Romanchuk, Dwayne Martineau, Don Delaney, Betty Fisher, Janis Hurlburt, Doris May, Nick Parayko, Alex Nagy. Studio Assistants: Kyle O’Brien, Miles Rufelds, Josh Schonblum. We are so grateful for their talent and contributions.

Public Studio

Public Studio is an artist collaborative led by Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky. Public Studio has worked and exhibited internationally and across Canada in a diverse range of media including large scale public artworks. 

Flanders and Sawatzky conceived of Public Studio as a place to bring their film and architectural practices together; they often work with other artists and thinkers in a variety of fields. Their work addresses landscape and politics, nature and colonialism.

Downtown is a meeting point for people from all corners of the city. In a cosmopolitan place like Edmonton, the downtown is also a meeting point for people with roots in all corners of the globe. This artwork celebrates this diversity through patterns and motifs representing the regions of the world that together make up contemporary Edmonton. Every culture, like every language, represents a different way of seeing the world. What we choose to focus on and how we translate that vision into new forms is highly specific. Yet translating the world around us into a decorative form is a near human universal. We all want the items with which we surround and adorn ourselves to speak to who we are. How we choose to help them talk is incredibly diverse. The decorative arts reflect what we value and what we are comforted by. They also show our histories and who we have met — in ways both positive and at times deeply damaging — along the way. Drawing on census data, this artwork represents the 16 world regions that make up the majority of Edmonton’s population. Each region is represented once, through a pattern or motif common to that area. The exception is Indigenous motifs; in recognition of the original holders of this land, Indigenous images appear on each shelter. None of these designs can adequately capture the essence or spirit of an entire people or area; they are snapshots of how someone, somewhere, recorded what was meaningful to themselves. Collected from blouses, belts, shoes, blankets, ceramics, bowls, plates, pillows, wallpaper, and other household items, these patterns and motifs represent a narrow glimpse into twenty ways of seeing the world. Held within them are stories of migration, cross-cultural interactions, travel, imperialism, conquest, collaboration, and resilience. They showcase the many places and people that have informed the creation of contemporary Edmonton. Placed at the center of the City, the message is simple: you are here. We are all here: collaborating, teaching, learning from, and inspiring one another.

Hello Kirsten

Born and raised in Edmonton, Hello Kirsten has been creating murals and public art installations for over a decade, in cities spanning the globe. Inspired by textiles, her detailed artworks showcase layered histories, using ornamentation and patterning to reveal alternate narratives that celebrate diversity in all its forms.

Kirsten views each public artwork she creates as an allegory for a particular time and place, one that speaks not only to who has passed through and who is here now, but also who might come in the future. In the complicated reality of a contemporary globalized world, her artworks represent a form of equitable placemaking that celebrates all individuals and cultures as having tremendous value.

Her art has been exhibited in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Montréal’s Musée des Beaux Arts, and many private galleries, and has appeared in festivals such as the Yorkville Murals Festival, Seawalls, and The Shanghai International Arts Festival. Her clients include Facebook, Cirque du Soleil, Converse, The W Hotel, and lululemon. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Art, and BUST, and books such as Print/​Maker (Uppercase, 2018) and Printopolis (Open Studio, 2016).

She lives in Toronto with her husband and collaborator JP King.

This botanically themed sculpture references the flora and fauna of the Muttart Conservatory and offers an organic contrast to its glass pyramids, so prominent in our city’s skyline. Through fabrication of this nature-inspired design, the artist challenges a false dichotomy where humans and nature are binary concepts. By reiterating natural forms, deconstructing and reassembling organic order, the artist seeks to address a collective estrangement from our origins.

Stephanie Jonsson

Stephanie Jonsson holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in sculpture from the University of Alberta and a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University. She has completed residencies at Harcourt House, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Medalta (Medicine Hat). 

She received the 2009 Award of Achievement from the Alberta Craft Council, and was listed among the Top 40 Under 40 in Edmonton’s Avenue Magazine that year. She has also been nominated for Emerging Artist of the Year at the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts Awards in Edmonton. Jonsson has taught at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Vancouver) and is now the head technician for the University of Alberta’s Sculpture Department.

The artwork for the Quarters Stop explores the concept of movement. The artist will use blacksmithing techniques to create an abstract ribbon like sculpture to be installed on the canopy rooftop. The folds and curves will represent the movement of people on transit, around their community and throughout the city. The separate bands of steel represent people connecting and interacting with each other and with their community.

Paul Reimer

Paul Reimer was born in Calgary, Alberta. At 15, he began his blacksmithing apprenticeship at the Kootenay Forge under the mentorship of John Smith. By the age of 20, he was the head blacksmith at Fort Steele Heritage Town in Cranbrook, BC.

Today, Paul has his own thriving blacksmithing business in Cranbrook where he lives with his wife and two children. Family and community involvement are the most important elements of Paul’s life. Paul has been commissioned to create large-scale public artworks in many cities across Western Canada. His sculptures are featured in galleries from Vancouver Island to Ontario.

The Tawatinâ bridge shared-use pathway features over 500 paintings of the River Valley’s flora and fauna, and the First Nations, Métis, and settler histories of the area. Bridging the city, the art works show the intertwined lives of the people and the non-human beings who live and travel through here. The artist’s meetings with First Nations Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and Métis citizens, and numerous visits to the Valley since childhood, are the backbone of these paintings. David Garneau, along with a team of First Nations, Métis, Black, Asian, and artists of European ancestry, captured Edmonton’s four seasons and complex histories. The huge expanse and collage-like format allowed the artist to combine a variety of images that would not suit a conventional mural. Garneau explains that each picture is a prompt to story-telling: ​“There are well-known histories, lesser-known family tales, sacred stories, hidden messages, and provocative combinations. The images are for everyone but the stories belong to those who know, keep, and share them. I have heard the stories but will not write them down. They are not mine to share. I hope their keepers will visit here, share their stories, and make these paintings live.” 

David Garneau

David Garneau is a Professor in Painting and Drawing at the University of Regina. He holds an MA in American Literature and BFA in Painting and Drawing with Distinction from the University of Calgary and has exhibited widely throughout Canada as well as internationally. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts: Outstanding Contribution (2023). He is a greatly sought after speaker at conferences and symposia. This commission represents a homecoming for him, and is his first public artwork in Edmonton.

“My interest in this project is personal and professional. I was born and raised in Edmonton and spent my youth exploring the River Valley. My great, great grandparents were Laurent and Eleanor Garneau (Métis) after whom the nearby Garneau district was named. That the Tawatinâ Bridge is so near to their river lot inspires me to return to this site with a proposal that honors our connection to this place, embodies some of the uses and teachings attached to this site, and engages the Indigenous community to co-create a work of art that is at once accessible and sublime.”