shannon gerard
My visual art practice operates across several platforms and media. I write, draw and publish in a variety of forms including on-line comics, periodical illustrations, trade-paperback graphic fiction, and self-published artist’s books and multiples. Thematically I am very curious about issues such as magic, hope, faith and human frailty. I also produce large-scale installations that incorporate stop-motion animations and digital print, and spend at least 50% of my waking life crocheting soft sculptures.
A lot of my work employs play as a research strategy. Areas of interest include the mindset of the collector, the sculptural and performative possibilities suggested by books and book-objects, the conceptual space that books occupy beyond the presentation of texts and images, and how the social position of works (in other words, where we tend to encounter particular modes of art) mediates how we become engaged as readers/viewers.
I am also really getting into marionettes.
I love to work with small gallery shops and retailers! If you are interested in carrying my crochet work or books, please contact me via email (shannon AT shannongerard DOT org, or click the envelope icon below) for wholesale prices and policies.
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projects
- UNSPENT LOVE
- BLOOD & THUNDER
- plants you can't kill
- BOOBS & DINKS
- PLAYING DOCTOR
- PLUSHTACHE
- anatomical hearts
- crocheted coral reef
- SWORD of MY MOUTH
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I had way too much fun in our recent professional development workshops at school. We are the paragon of professionalism. Printmaking at OCADU knows how to kill it. And we have daaaaance moooves.
Best team: Elle Nurse, Juddie, King-Shick Happens-Pin, NADBAR the Burninator, (Emily— what’s your nick name? Does anyone call you Cookie Monster?) and G-rad.
There’s a short little piece up on Open Book Toronto about why I make “comics.”
The anniversary of Junie Carter Cash’s death is coming up next week on May 15, so I learned this song today. Among her uncountable gifts, Junie, one of my all-time-most-treasured Lady Heroes, gave me the word “turble.”
Yes, this mortality thing is dern turble.
Junie, always in my heart, talkin’ with ‘er mouth!
11 Plays
I’m giving a public talk about my work and some other radical stuff!
OCADU, 100 McCaul Street, ROOM 284
WED 25 APRIL, 130 - 230
I’d love it so much if you’d come to hear me blab on the topics I am most passionate about— Independent and Alternative Forms of Publishing, Community Engagement and Relational Aesthetics, The Place of Book Arts within Contemporary Art Practice, and my own work as a book maker, artist, writer and educator.
I’ll speak a bit about recent publications, Unspent Love and Sword of my Mouth, as well as my work with public installation and animation. And I’m really excited to share some initial work on two new projects— Blood and Blunder (a graphic novel about my father’s childhood as an itinerant puppeteer) and Time Loops (a pretty amorphous new project that uses hyperbolic crochet to investigate the passage of time).
If you like funny stories, I’m gunna tella coupla whoppers!
(via fuckyeahbookarts)
Hey there! Are you by chance still selling the plushtaches? If so, how much are those adorable facial accessories?
yoursarcasticfriend
Hi. Yep. Plushtaches are on Etsy. Thanks!
James is moving to Halifax next week. Driving with only what can fit in his car. Setting off for a new adventure.
Agh. I’m going to miss you like crazy! But you’re going to have the best life. Here’s a little song to send you down the new road.
20 Plays
Updates coming soon to This Machine. Text and Image students, the audio post above is your prompt for the week. Responses from anyone else are welcome too!
50 Plays
Thanks to Rachel Anne Farquharson for this great review of PINK PEARL at Art Barrage!
This brief animation was part of the exhibition PINK PEARL at the Gladstone Hotel in December 2011.
Print media is often characterized by a material emphasis on subtraction and addition. As a dug hole is mirrored by the mound of dirt it unearths, any removal of material from the surface of a print matrix implies an accumulation elsewhere. What meaning can be found in those liminal spaces between minus and plus? Works in PINK PEARL move past surface engagements with etched plates, burned screens, grained stones, carved wood and cut paper to explore the concepts of erasure and transcendence. Using print as a primary strategy, artists in PINK PEARL create 2-dimensional works on paper, artist books, material arts, sculpture, and animation.
After my dad and uncle had grown and moved to Canada, Gramma lived in Hawaii and often told me stories about how that was the happiest time of her life. Check her out there up top» Babe. That’s Bette in Chula Vista with my dad in 1945.
She used to sing Mele Kalikimaka to us at Christmas time. Happy holidays, internet!
*Thanks to Wendy and David for the new uke!
60 Plays
