Shannon Mendes was an active member of Vancouver’s visual arts community from the late 1990s through the early 2010s. Her artwork explored urban spaces where people connect and gather, highlighting how these points of interaction contribute to the social vibrancy of cities. Notable projects include a photographic exhibition examining public transit as a connector of people, and a multimedia project co-created with Nettie Wild and Jeremy Mendes that showcased and engaged the diverse cultural communities of Vancouver’s South Hill neighbourhood.
Alongside her fine art practice, Shannon spent over a decade working as an editorial photographer for Canadian, American, and European publications. She photographed and produced portrait profiles of artists, musicians, activists, actors, educators, and visionaries, as well as contributing to a wide range of larger-scale editorial projects.
In 2015, her love of nature, food growing, and digging in the soil, inspired a career shift into ecological landscape and permaculture design. She believes that working with nature—and observing the relationships between plants, water, the soil web—is essential. In 2019, the Cedar Cottage Food Network Society commissioned Shannon to design a climate resiliency plan for Copley Orchard in East Vancouver. This public-realm project marked a transition from private residential landscape design to a focus on municipal sustainability planning and policy.
Today, Shannon works in sustainability planning at the Vancouver Park Board. She brings her visual arts, ecological horticulture, and landscape design skills to support her work to prioritize low-impact, nature-based solutions in Vancouver.
