Artist: Cristina Delago
Category: Temporary Public Art Projects
Address: 30 Loafer’s Lake Lane, Brampton

This public art initiative is part of the My Neighbourhood Art Project; a series of site-specific, temporary art installations created in collaboration with the community. One of the goals of the project is to increase artist opportunities by pairing a local emerging artist with a seasoned lead artist. The artists worked together to capture community feedback and engaged participants from the Inclusion and Integration Program at Paul Palleschi Recreation Centre in a series of mosaic-making activities. The artist team also led several workshops for neighbourhood residents, inviting them to take part in the co-creation of the mural. The artwork takes inspiration from the surrounding ecology and highlights many of the animals that inhabit Loafer’s Lake.

Over 25 community participants contributed time and inspiration to create this mosaic mural which is now installed on the Loafer’s Lake Boathouse Bunkie, located behind the Paul Palleschi Recreation Centre, along the Etobicoke Creek Trail.

My Neighbourhood Art Project responds to a council directive for city-wide neighbourhood beautification and speaks to a need for meaningful, neighbourhood-level, placemaking, and community arts engagement.

image of My Neighbourhood Art Project | What We Love About Loafer’s Lake, 2023

Cristina Delago is an artist and community arts facilitator. She was born in Italy where her artistic spirit was nurtured and moved to Toronto to attend OCADU, where she graduated with honours in Design and a specialization in ceramics. Shortly after graduation, she began her own business creating handcrafted tiles and architectural elements, working with many recognized interior designers and architects. Cristina’s passion for teaching and community arts led her to facilitate workshops at The ROM, Avenue Road Art School, VIBE Arts, and Mural Routes. She has also created many large-scale mosaic murals, some of these in collaboration with the community. Her mosaic mural can be found at the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, Coxwell Subway Station, and the intersection of Bathurst and Lawrence, among other locations.

Cristina is passionate about engaging communities and creating more beautiful and safe environments through her art. She also strives to use recycled materials, whenever possible, to promote sustainability in her larger projects.

Bianca Delmar is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Brampton working in the mediums of film, illustration, game development, and poetry. Their greatest ambition is to make people feel, which is why their work is hyper-focused on emotion, identity, and disability. As a filmmaker, Bianca has extensive experience directing, screenwriting, and editing. Her debut short, It Will All Be Over Soon (2023) was awarded the TIFF Cinema Studies Prize by the University of Toronto, Mississauga, and also won Best Sound Design at the UTM Film Festival. Bianca's latest project Iris (2023) is an experimental psychological horror short film that they co-directed, wrote, and edited.

Bianca's editorial illustrations have appeared in the University of Toronto newspaper, The Varsity. She has also contributed to the indie game zine, Indiepocalypse, as a game developer, sequential artist, zine maker, and radio show guest. You can listen to them talk about making incomprehensible things on Indiepocalypse Radio.