Artistic process // Processus artistique

Emily is an artist, performer, teacher and community organizer working at the intersections of art and ecology. In recent years, her environmentally and socially driven approach has resulted in a series of in-situ art projects, speaking engagements, community activist art projects, performances and publications. Emily is founding member of Les Amis du Champ des Possibles, a citizen-run nonprofit that advocates for the cultural, ecological, and social importance of wild urban spaces. She is also co-director of an art and nature themed summer camp for youth upon 200 acres of rural farmland. She has collaborated with community groups, municipal politicians, city architects, botanists, journalists, and artists on projects that cultivate civic participation and environmental stewardship. She is based between Outaouais and Montreal.

Land Art, in-situ installation, performance, drawing, painting: Emily’s art weaves into its’ fabric something bigger than object: experience. She invites the public to participate in something natural, yet ephemeral, to re-invigorate our sense of place. Whether living tapestry, multi-year Land Art project or electronic book made to be re-mixed, her projects embody the living processes and traces of material as social practice. She experiments 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. Emily is 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.

Emily Rose Michaud
October 8, 2013.