This hand-painted mural celebrates colour and motion. The artists intended to complement both the new transit center and the nearby urban landscape. The colours and shapes relate to the visual experience of the mural and the surrounding neighbourhood – a place of diverse land uses, pathways, commerce, and people. Colours on signs, packaging, clothing and other details of this landscape make Have a Nice Day at home in a sea of changing colour.

Chelsea Boida & Mark Feddes

Mark Feddes lives in Edmonton, where he paints, draws, and designs. He received a BFA in Drawing from Alberta College of Art and Design, in Calgary, and also studied in Cooper Union in New York City. He has toured North America, informing his art practice as a painter. 

Living in Edmonton where she completed her BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of Alberta, Chelsea Boida focuses her personal art practice on photography, video, and printmaking.

The large plasma-cut and powder-coated steel sculpture stands over three and a half meters high, recalling the magnificent size of a Bison. Its convex shape towers over and surrounds the viewer, drawing the viewer in to its centre. The title can be traced back to the Cree word for Bison, revealing the influence of aboriginal culture and legends on the artist, as well as the inspiration from his Saskatchewan home on the Great Plains. ​“The Bison is an animal of strength and symbolism. It represents food, clothing and shelter for our native western Canadian people,” according to the donor of the artwork, JR Shaw, Executive Chairman of Shaw Communications Inc. on whose property the sculpture sits. The sculpture is located on the lookout deck on the south side of the Shaw Conference Centre.

Joe Fafard

Joseph Yvon Fafard was born on September 2, 1942 to French Canadian parents in Sainte-Marthe, Saskatchewan. After graduating from the University of Manitoba and receiving a Masters of Fine Arts in 1968 from Pennsylvania State University, he taught sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan in Regina for six years.

Fafard’s career was focused on plaster and ceramics before shifting to bronze sculpture in 1985 upon opening the Julienne Atelier foundry in Pense, Saskatchewan. Currently he lives and works from his acreage in Lumsden, Saskatchewan outside of Regina. 

The landscape, people and animals of Fafard’s surroundings influence his work. Horses, deer and foxes have all been subjects in his sculpture, while cows have become one of his trademarks. 

Fafard is world renowned and the recipient of numerous awards, including the designation of Officer to the Order of Canada recognizing his contribution to the arts in Canada in 1981 and the Architectural Institute of Canada Allied Arts Award in 1987. He received an Honorary Degree from the University of Regina in 1989 as well as the University of Manitoba in 2007. Most recently, a retrospective of his work organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Mackenzie Art Gallery toured 6 venues over two years from 2007 to 2009.

_​AmiskwacÎw Wâskâyhkan Ihtâwin_​(Beaver Hills House Park) invites the public to wander through Michael Phair Park and into Beaver Hills House Park led by a community of Bohemian wax-wing birds. More than 150 bird silhouettes make this artwork a three-dimensional experience as the movement takes people into the park. Flight studies were interpreted as ten different shapes of the wax-wing come to life from takeoff to mid-flight and beyond. This procession is further accentuated by the mural, the edge of the boreal forest — the context of Edmonton and the landscape that is true to this place. Both Cree syllabics and translations are utilized as the main hierarchy to express the Indigenous roots of this special place; a place to gather and share stories about the past, present, and future.

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.

Vaulted Willow (known as ​“Willow) is a celebration of artistic, architectural, and mathematic disciplines. Artist Marc Fornes describes the sculpture as an ​“architectural folly,” evoking the decorative, but generally non-practical structures that adorned the great estates of Europe in the 18^th & 19^th centuries. As a structure, it explores the concept of lightweight, self-supporting elements generated through computations of form and structure as well as descriptive geometry. The use of these processes unifies all elements of the sculpture — its structure, skin and ornamentation — into a single unified system. From a distance, the sculpture’s colours seem to meld seamlessly into one another. Up close, the surface is revealed as an intricate assembly of coloured structural shingles. Although similar, each digitally fabricated strip is unique. The shingles overlap each other creating a strong and thick, but delicate-looking structure. Willow’s colors originated in its immediate natural environment. The artist, realizing the sculpture’s potential as an iconic destination within Borden Park, pushed the hues toward artificiality. The greens and blues blend into a synthetic magenta, imbuing the sculpture with the appearance of motion. Willow’s colour, shape and tracery of light and shadow invite the passerby to stop, explore and play within. BITS AND PARTS: Willow is comprised of 721 aluminum stripes, 14,043 connectors (1÷4” aluminum rivets) and 60 epoxy concrete anchors. The aluminum (5052 type) is used in three different thicknesses: 1/8″ (3mm) stripes, 1/4″ (6mm) at the feet, and 1/2″ (10mm) for the 24 base plates that are anchored to a concrete pad of 240 cubic feet.. It took four days, and a crew of 4 to assemble the prefabricated parts.

Marc Fornes & THEVERYMANY

Marc Fornes is the founder and principal of THEVERYMANY a design studio. His design and art projects have been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Extension Gallery in Chicago, Gallery Synesthesie in Paris, Gallery Roger Tate in Lyon, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Bridge Gallery in New York. 

Within his academic background Marc Fornes has taught design studios and seminars at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Columbia University in New York, Harvard University in Cambridge, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Die Angewandte in Vienna. He has led many workshops and served as a guest critic at several institutions such as the Architectural Association in London, The Royal College of Art in London, Pratt Institute in New York, the University of Pennsylvania, and Ball State University. 

In 2007 Marc Fornes produced & curated ​‘Scriptedbypurpose’, the first exhibition exclusively focusing on scripted processes within design, and recently curated the European section for the Architecture Biennale 2008 in Beijing.

_​iskotew_​is a sculptural representation of the word ​“fire” in nehiyawewin (Cree language) syllabics: ᐃᐢᑯᑌᐤ. The colours chosen are based on colours that are seen in both historical and contemporary works as to illustrate the congruencies and survival within Indigenous cultures. The vibrancy of the colours are also congruent with the vibrancy of our cultures and languages. The nehiyawewin word for woman, iskwew, is derived from the word fire, therefore; iskotew connotes the sacred abilities of women, and the often unrecognized labours of Indigenous women who contributed to creating the place now known as Edmonton. ​“Click here”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyMZkFq-YDc/ to see a video about Amy Malbeuf and _​iskotew_​(Video: Conor McNally, Music: Matthew Cardinal) ​“Click here”:http://yegarts.tumblr.com/post/175372570865/introducing-the-%E1%90%84%E1%93%83%E1%90%A4-%C3%AEn%C3%AEw-river-lot-11-artists/ for the YEGArts Blog interview with Amy Malbeuf.

Amy Malbeuf

Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta. Malbeuf has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at such venues as the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops; Contemporary Calgary; Kings ARI, Melbourne, Australia; and Stride Gallery, Calgary. Most recently Malbeuf exhibited at the Dunlop Art Gallery as part of Material Girls as well as in Future Station: Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta. 

Malbeuf has participated in many international artist residencies including at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia; The Banff Centre, Alberta; The Labrador Research Institute, Labrador; and in 2015 was named one of two Canada Council for the Arts fellows at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico. Malbeuf lives and works in Kelowna where she is working towards a MFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

_​Still Life_​is created by Studio F Minus. In writing about this sculpture installation, the artists say: ​“_​Still Life_​, of course, isn’t still at all. [The work is] a set of six sculptures located in the centre of the grassy space near the Grant MacEwan LRT station. On their own, each is a whimsical, colourful addition to the site. When viewed together from a viewpoint looking through the final sculpture, a picture frame, the sculptures flatten into the classic trope of Western painting: the still life with fruit bowl. The sculptures are spaced with enough distance between them that commuters or students can walk freely between them, entering and exiting the ​“picture”. In some ways, the sculptures are like a puzzle, one that invites pause in order for curious viewers to solve with their own positioning. However, the piece is designed to also incorporate those who move through it as an equally important part of the experience. The project is titled ​“Still Life” as a play on the vitality of the site [and is intended] to capitalize on the heavy pedestrian traffic surrounding the rail station by creating a piece that the commuting masses could interact with. The people viewing the piece, or even just passing by, actually activate and animate this Still Life. They turn the installation into a flat image by standing in front of the frame, and change the image by walking among the sculptures.

Studio F‑Minus

Brad Hindson is an architect and lighting designer who has notched extensive experience working with Canada’s top architecture and lighting design firms. Working at internationally-acclaimed offices KPMB and Diamond + Schmitt Architects, Hindson has contributed to the design of numerous high-profile buildings internationally, and served as project architect on prominent public art installations. Prior to moving to Toronto, Hindson was a designer at Gabriel Lighting Design, where his clients included the National Arts Centre and the City of Ottawa. He has since continued to lecture on lighting innovation, artistry, and technical execution to an international audience.

Mitchell F Chan is an interactive media artist who has exhibited in galleries across Canada and the United States. He made his American gallery debut in 2009 alongside Robert Rauschenberg at the Alan Avery Art Company in Atlanta, while back home his work continues to attract national media attention for its innovative blend of technology and intuitive human experience. In 2009, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago made him the recipient of their highest award as a Merit Scholar in their innovative Art & Technology Studies department. Most recently, his water-vapor sculpture was exhibited in the iconic John Hancock Tower, as part of an exhibition re-imagining the possibilities of public artworks in the city of Chicago.

Working in collaboration under the banner of Studio F‑Minus, Hindson and Chan have earned numerous plaudits for their work from critics and media outlets as varied as The Toronto Star, The National Post, Boing​bo​ing​.net, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Richard Florida’s Cre​ative​class​.com. Their first collaboration, A Dream of Pastures, opened to a one-night audience of 60 000 people outside the Art Gallery of Ontario. This debut effort was later exhibited as part of the Corcoran Gallery’s travelling exhibition Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, a retrospective on some of the most technologically innovative and significant art of the past 150 years. Since then, their commissions have included the installation of a sound-responsive, environmentally-themed sculpture in Santiago Calatrava’s Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place; an exhibition of light-and-shadow artworks for Toronto’s Luminato Festival; and a series of trompe‑l’oeil sculptures for a new light rail station in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2011, Studio F‑Minus expanded its practice through public art collaborations with architecture firms such as Diamond + Schmitt and Du Toit Allsopp Hillier, and engineering firm Blackwell Bowick. They continue to pursue in new frontiers in lighting, networked technologies, and interactive media.

For the new LRT stations at NAIT and MacEwan University, students were invited to submit their designs for functional, artistic bike racks to enliven the commute. Five designs from six students were chosen. The NAIT bike racks are by Christopher Rodriguez and Mark Winget, both students at NAIT.

Student Artists

Chelsea Allan – NAIT
Alina Cross – NAIT
Morgan Wellborn & Chunyu Qi – MacEwan University
Christopher Rodriguez -NAIT
Marc Winget – NAIT

The idea of community, gathering and comfort is at the heart of Craig Le Blanc’s sculptural installation, _​Henri_​. A sleeping cat is quietly and securely curled in a net, suspended above a community gathering space as a representation of an idyllic environment with suggestions of safekeeping, home and comfort. In time Henri may become an intimate part of the neighbourhood landscape, and a familiar component of personal, family and community activities. _​Henri_​was recognized by the Public Art Network and was selected for inclusion in the Public Art Network’s 2011 Year in Review. Much of Calgary-based artist Craig Le Blanc’s work involves re-creating familiar objects that convey a simple or singular narrative. His technical and refined works are representations of concepts relating to gender, identity and place.

Craig LeBlanc

Known for his craftsmanship and execution, Craig LeBlanc employs many mediums in the search for the appropriate creative solution, utilizing an array of materials and digital technologies. He has worked within design education (Industrial Design, Visual Communication Design, Architecture) for two decades, exposing him to procedures and methodologies that forever influence his visual arts practice.

Craig Le Blanc operates as The White Studio, an inclusive design studio focused on design for public and private art commissions, graphic design, industrial design and more recently the amalgamation of marketing and art. He has found success in the public art realm, creating three large scale pieces from 2010 – 2016, one of which (Henri 2010) won an Americans for the Arts/​Public Art Network Year in Review award for 2011.

He has received several art awards and has exhibited extensively within Canada and the US. He has works in several private, corporate and municipal collections.

Composed of nearly 1,000 hand crafted stainless steel spheres that together assume the shape of an abstracted pile or mound, Talus Dome reflects the sky, the weather and the river of cars that pass by it. _​Talus Dome_​is both a sculpture in the landscape and a mirror to the landscape. Before the Quesnell bridge was constructed, talus forms of earth occurred naturally along the river valley. The artwork reminds us of the landscape that has been altered by the bridge, a rigid, controlled construction that meets our need to traverse the obstacle of the river. It refers to the coexistence of the man-made and the natural. The spheres were fabricated by hand, either spun or hydro-formed depending on the particular size. Each sphere then went through a grinding and polishing process to achieve the mirror finish. The marine grade 316L mirror polished stainless steel used is among the highest-grade stainless steel available for architectural scaled applications. It will remain ageless through the cycle of seasons and over many years. At the same time, the surface of _​Talus Dome_​will take on different colors with the changing seasons and hours of the day. Its visual quality is not static, and therefore creates a balance between its permanence, and its changeable appearance that suggests the mutability of nature. The sculpture is located at a major junction of the city’s river valley trail system, and is accessible to a wide range of people – walkers, runners, bikers, skiers, inline skaters. While visible from the road, the best way to experience _​Talus Dome_​is from the adjacent trail.

Ball Nogues Studio

Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues explore the nexus of art, architecture, and industrial design. Their work has been exhibited at major institutions throughout the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum; PS1; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; arc en rêve centre d’architecture + Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux; the Venice Biennale, the Hong Kong | Shenzhen Biennale; and the Beijing Biennale. 

They have received numerous honors including three American Institute of Architects Design Awards, United States Artists Target Fellowships and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. In 2007, the Studio was the winner of the Museum of Modern Arts PS1 Young Architects Program Competition. Recently, their work became part of the permanent collection of MoMA. 

In 2011 they were one of the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices. The partners have taught in the graduate architecture programs at the Southern California Institute of Architecture;the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. Their work has appeared in a variety of publications worldwide including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Architectural Record, Artforum, Icon, Log, Architectural Digest, and Sculpture.

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.”