Stormwater Public Artist in Residence
Lisa Hirmer is Mississauga’s stormwater public artist in residence. Lisa’s work will raise awareness of stormwater management projects and processes, highlighting how this work addresses climate change, sustainability, regeneration and connections with nature.
About the residency
Artist-in-residence programs give artists the opportunity to live and work outside of their usual environment, explore something new, teach or hone new skills, and produce work through an open-ended and collaborative environment. It is based on the premise that artists are creative problem-solvers and that space and time can alter perspectives.
In this inaugural role for Mississauga’s public art program, the public artist in residence will immerse themselves in the work of the stormwater projects team to propose new public art that is deeply community-informed, relationship-centered, and engaged in critical civic issues.
About the artist
Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist whose work, in one way or another, is about the collective nature of being—the parts of life that can only exist between things. Spanning photography, sculpture, installation, social practice, community collaboration and sometimes writing, her work explores collective relationships both within human communities and between humans and the more-than-human-world (which is to say other species as well as planetary forces like water, wind, geology, and so on).
Her work has been shown in galleries across Canada and internationally including at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, Cambridge Galleries, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Tom Thompson Gallery, Fondation Grantham, Harbourfront Centre, KIAC, Peninsula Arts, CAFKA, Third Space, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory, among others. Her public art experience includes an ongoing artist-made garden for nocturnal pollinators in collaboration with Christina Kingsbury called Moth Garden; and a public art installation for the City of Barrie as part of Seeds to Sow curated by Katie Lawson. Her book of poetry, Forests Not Yet Here, which emerges from texts written for participatory works, was published by Publication Studio Guelph in 2020.
Lisa was selected for this role by an arms-length jury, through an open call to artists.