Lisa Shepherd co-created the "Breathe." project in 2020 along with friend and fellow artist Nathalie Bertin. The coronavirus pandemic was affecting people across our country and around the world in early 2020, and artists Nathalie and Lisa found themselves wanting to explore how artistic masks, in particular for them, beaded ones, were being used as a way of people expressing their experiences and struggles through this time.
In April 2020, they created a Facebook group they called, Breathe. Within a month more than 1500 artists had joined their newfound community, sharing stories and their art created during this difficult time. Breathe. created space for artists across Canada to showcase their talent, offering them the opportunity for their work to be seen by buyers and galleries.
Soon it became clear there was another opportunity for all this artwork: an exhibition featuring these gorgeous masks. To read more about the Breathe. project, see the media coverage it garnered across Canada, and learn about the traveling exhibitions that have been created, check out THIS WEB PAGE.
WALKING WITH OUR SISTERS (2013-2019)
Lisa Shepherd was a member of the national collective and a contributing artist for the "Walking With Our Sisters" project. Walking With Our Sisters is a massive collaborative art installation project of over 1,700 pairs of moccasin tops (“vamps”) commemorating and representing an estimated 824 Aboriginal women and girls who have been murdered or gone missing in Canada since 1961. Lisa also ran a beading group in the Fraser Valley, BC to create vamps for the project. The commemorative exhibit was launched in the fall of 2013 and toured across Canada until 2019. Read more about Walking With Our Sisters - and how it pays tribute to Canada's Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women - HERE.