Modern Artist Profile - Katie Strang and Christine Dewancker of D&S Projects

In conversation with Katie Strang and Christine Dewancker of D&S Projects one of the many talented artists participating in the 2025 Mississauga Festival of Trees.

Spring Shine, Thorncliffe Public School, 2022 . photo by Christine Lim.

1. Tell us a bit about your art practice. What do you specifically do?

Katie: We collaborate on site specific art installations, often temporary, and often with reclaimed or biodegradable materials. This can involve using a material directly, like stacking or piling wood, or brick, or indirectly, like producing prints or cyanotypes from leaves that are used as imagery in a work. 

2. What inspires you?

Katie: I find it very inspiring to go to different places, and see different landscapes, particularly what plants are growing, and how things are built. I’m interested in the way we shape our environment, and the way it shapes us in return. There’s so much complexity underlying the forms that cities and ecologies take. 

Christine: I’m inspired by the history of materials and specifically the materials we encounter everyday through the built environment. I work with building materials everyday and am inspired by how they are integrated into our lives from a socioeconomic  perspective.

To Love You Deeply, I Look to My Mind’s Eye, Bickford Park, Nuit Blanche, 2015. photo by Ricardo Jota.

3. How do you approach a new project?

Katie: We typically do research into the history of a site or material, and then discuss what interests us about it. Because we work collaboratively, the conversations we have about the work and the process that will be involved in creating it is a big part of the concept development. We both have other professional practices, so it’s important that the time we spend making a work is also an opportunity to explore an idea or material that we want to learn more about. 

Christine: Collaboration is at the heart of our approach and the foundation of our shared practice. Katie and I bring unique perspectives and through our initial research and discussions we often learn from each other; we know we are on the right track with a project when we are both excited about the direction we’re heading with it. 

4. Describe the experience of working with CreativeHub 1352 in Mississauga on a commissioned artwork for the Festival of Trees.

Katie: It’s a pretty efficient and supportive process; the turnaround from submitting a proposal to exhibiting a work is just a few months, and the team at CreativeHub 1352 is available to discuss the process throughout.

Christine: It has been great and is always amazing to see how the space is transformed. 

Katie Strang, left and Christine Dewancker, right. Photo by Christine Lim.

5. What excites you about Mississauga's Festival of Trees?

Katie: It’s a high traffic event - we have to put the work together quickly, but a lot of people see it during the time it is installed. We’ve participated twice before, and both times other opportunities arose because people engaged with our work at the Festival of Trees. 

6. What's in store for 2026?

Christine: Possibly a permanent public artwork and an exhibition in May

Tree Archive Mississauga Festival of Trees, 2022. photo by Katie Strang.