Emily Rose Michaud is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working at the crossroads of community organizing, ecology, and civic engagement. Her art highlights the social importance of marginal landscapes, engages with land as a living entity, and maintains a practice in ephemeral media. Her body of work encompasses land-based art, installation, drawing, painting, writing and intervention. In recent years, her environmental and participatory approach has resulted in a series of in-situ art projects, speaking engagements, community activist art projects, performances and publications. She has exhibited nationally, both in and out of the gallery and has attracted international media attention for her Roerich Garden Project (2007-2011) in Montreal.
Having worked in Montreal for 15 years, she has collaborated with architects, botanists, gardeners, policy-makers, activists, journalists, community, politicians, and youth. In 2009, she co-founded Les Amis du Champ des Possibles, a citizen-run non-profit that demonstrates and advocates for the cultural, ecological, and social importance of wild urban spaces. She has been based in the Outaouais region of Quebec since 2012.
Michaud’s academic outreach can be found in her contributions as editor and writer: she was creative director and co-editor of The Roerich Garden open book project, (2008-2011) and has contributed essays and content to anthologies including DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media, MIT Press (2014), and Thinking With Water, McGill-Queen’s University Press (2013).
Emily Rose Michaud holds a BA in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal and a BA in Education from the University of Ottawa. She lives in Chelsea, Qc.
Artist Statement
I find sustenance in the cultural life and social movements of urban centres, yet have a personal need to create near and with the changing elements and conditions of the living landscape: under open sky, by water, in wide open spaces.
Land Art, in-situ installation, drawing, painting: My art weaves into its fabric something bigger than object — experience. I invite the public to participate in something natural, impermanent, to re-invigorate our sense of belonging. I work to collaborate with environmental and social forces greater than me, to eclipse cynicism, to take responsibility for the places we find ourselves in, to deepen our relationships with the landscapes in which we live. As a practicing visual artist, I assemble into my projects social life (and energies). I extend my creations beyond sole-authorship, into co-authorship.
Whether living tapestry, multi-year Land Art project or electronic book made to be re-mixed, my projects embody the living processes and traces of material as social practice. I experiment with ways of working that feed the commons, transform spectators into participants, and extend artistic production beyond rarefied spaces — into social, political and environmental action. I am concerned with the living systems of our world, both our cities and villages — natural, cultural, civic — especially as they relate to municipal power, politics, and decisions that impact urban/rural development, ecology, and land use.
My current practice focuses on the Ottawa River watershed, an intelligent and interconnected system uniting humans, ecology and history. My holistic approach to the world embraces the life around me—listening to places, animals, people, seasons, and the interdependence of living beings. These encounters shape my work across various media—drawing, painting, ceramics, cyanotype, living textiles, audio, and video—a crossroads of art, ecology, and education that opens a dialogue with both natural and cultural ecosystems.
I am currently exploring the use of the sun’s UV rays to expose the materials I assemble into my cyanotype drawings. I also explore the alchemy of colors in the form of botanical inks and dyes in my abstract paintings. In 2025, I began producing place-based paintings and cyanotypes, exploring our human connection to cycles, memory, and local cartography, using materials sourced from local pigments when accessible (black walnut, charcoal, mica, chalk, metals, blackberries, madder root, hibiscus, etc.).
– September 2025.