Biography

Lisa Brawn is a Calgary based artist specializing in painted woodcut blocks. Her work is in public collections such as The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Civic Art Collection, and The University of Lethbridge collection, as well as in private collections across Canada, Europe, and the United States. Her work has been featured on banners for Calgary Bridges, Calgary Parks, and Fort Calgary, and there is a large scale permanent installation of her woodblocks at Inglewood’s Festival Hall.

A major component of Lisa’s art practice has been exploring the possibilities for alternative art venues and project spaces. Starting in 2001, her artmobile in a 1935 vintage travel trailer was followed by an art salon in Calgary’s Grain Exchange building. Lisa then collaborated with Milo Dlouhy and Angela Inglis to transform a downtown warehouse into an artist-run gallery and Museum of Oddities. In 2007 Brawn, Dlouhy, and Inglis collaborated on a storefront museum in Art Central, and in 2009 and 2010, Brawn and Inglis collaborated with Jane Grace on an interdisciplinary project space in a hundred year old cottage. In 2009 Brawn transformed a 1962 Airstream into a second mobile gallery, The Bambi Media Machine, which was featured in the film “I Liked You Better Before” directed by Michal Lavi. From 2007 to 2012, Lisa curated a window gallery with Inglis and Grace, known as La Fenêtre.

In her twenty year career as a professional artist, Lisa has been featured in 25 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 40 group exhibitions from Victoria, Seattle and Los Angeles, to Halifax, Chicago and New Orleans. She received international attention for her large scale interactive, solar-powered sculptural installation, Helios, at the Leighton Art Centre, which was featured on CBC’s As It Happens, and picked up by media outlets from Canada to Brazil.