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 am so blessed to know such amazing, creative people.
ALSO Collective are working on a short movie about the Carl Wagan and we gathered with the incomparable Graham Nicholas last night to record some tracks for the film. Antonio’s friend Darryl played harmonica too! What a capital evening!
On a long night walk home, a sidewalk covered in shredded paper was like snowfall in August. But the snow was things once written then unwritten.
I miss you, so much.
I recently started recording very short videos, all under 30 seconds, that communicate some of my small experiences. The album on Vimeo is called The Single Word, Delighted.
You can watch several (or just one) of the films HERE > https://vimeo.com/album/2008228
This one is an interaction with Amalie Atkins’ most delightful installation Three Minute Miracle: Tracking the Wolf at MASS MoCA.
When I saw the first few results compiled in an album, I thought of this amazing moment from JD Salinger’s Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction. Surely one of the best literary exchanges of all-time:
The old man adjusted the pad and pencil on his lap with greatest care, then sat for a moment, pencil poised, in obvious concentration, his grin diminished only a very trifle. Then the pencil began, very unsteadily, to move. An ‘i’ was dotted. And then both pad and pencil were returned personally to me, with a marvellously cordial extra added wag of the head. He had written, in letters that had not quite jelled yet, the single word “Delighted.” The Matron of Honor, reading over my shoulder, gave a sound faintly like a snort, but I quickly looked over at the great writer and tried to show by my expression that all of us in the car knew a poem when we saw one, and were grateful.
Priority One on this year’s trip was to visit MASS MoCA and see Oh, Canada. It did not disappoint. North Adams MA is an absolutely amazing little town.
We stayed in the city-run Historic Valley Campgrounds where we had campfires and swam in mountain lakes and then WALKED INTO TOWN to see one of the country’s best Contemporary Art Museums. Real Life!!
AND we discovered the most darling bookshop— GJ Askins at the Eclipse Mill. Piles and Piles of volumes covering every surface of a former residential space in an old mill. It was so wonderful.
AND we stumbled into PRESS, a letterpress gallery and print shop run by the amazing Melanie Mowinski— a prof at Massachusetts Liberal Arts College who, like me, was weary of waiting at the Institutional Baggage Claim and decided to start a letterpress studio her own damn self! (well, with the help of some beautiful people it seems) I instantly adored her and her project!
This video was made at an old warehouse which was almost maybe going to be an artist residency, until the roof caved in. The real roof. Right in. Oops.
North Adams, I LOVE YOU!! I’m ready for BFF. Call me.
The HI WILLY » HI MUM series continues this summer. I started a blog to collect them all in one place. You can scroll through the album HERE > http://hiwillyhimum.tumblr.com/
Jen B over at Fidoodle HQ told us about this amazing iPhone app called Frameographer and we have been playing with it tonnes on the road!
Willy and I are gearing up for another road trip, starting this Sunday. This is my favourite photo from last year’s epic journey, accompanied by the John Denver lullaby my mom and dad used to sing us when we were little and which I sang to Willy almost every night when he was a toddler.
Follow our adventures on the Blood and Thunder blog:
http://bloodandblunder.tumblr.com/
Or on twitter:
HIM: @wilbo45
ME: @shannongerard
We’re also planning a cool Instagram project:
HIM: “wilbonianempire”
ME: “shannon_gerard”
More detailed post about the Carl Wagan Bookmobile and Camp Nano coming soon. Here’s one of the most magical moments of the day: Taikun and Jackie’s impromptu band!!
THURSDAY JUNE 28, 2012
Come celebrate the launch of CAMP NANO and the Student Gallery’s SUMMER CAMP with a full day and evening of programs. Earn badges, sit by the campfire and nosh on smores and trailmix.
The OCADU Student Gallery is launching its inaugural SUMMER CAMP program! Each week until August 24 will feature a unique set of events including underwater photoshoots, friendship bracelet workshops, outdoor movie screenings and urban canoe trips. Check the Student Gallery website (www.studentgallery.ocad.ca) for details weekly.
// PROGRAM OF OPENING EVENTS // THURSDAY JUNE 28 //
WORKSHOPS // @ Carl Wagan in Butterfield Park (12-2pm)
PARTY // Celebrate at the Student Gallery (6-11pm)
CAMPFIRE // Get cosy by the fire in Butterfield Park (after sundown)
CAMP NANO brings together the diverse publications of students in NANO PUBLISHING, a hands-on course in OCADU’s Printmaking department that examines the nature, history and politics of independent publication with an emphasis on active community engagement, distribution models, and strategies for working outside of frameworks offered by mainstream media conglomerates and retailers. Using a variety of studio techniques including letterpress, screen, digital printing, and book arts, Art and Design students make zines and artists’ multiples, organize a public exhibition of their work, participate in local book related initiatives, and establish consignment relationships with local galleries and shops.
THE CARL WAGAN BOOKMOBILE is a traveling campervan of cosmic proportions. It is a gallery, printshop, studio, library, reading room, classroom, and community project—all contained within a 1988 VW Westfalia. CARL WAGAN promotes active engagement with book-based cultural activity such as self-publishing, zine-making, screen-printing, and bookbinding. Subtitled “The Spaceship of the Imagination,” CARL is partly a loving homage to the innovation of astronomer Carl Sagan whose passion for dreaming continues to inspire generations of thinkers. CARL WAGAN is an experiment in radical pedagogy—bringing the strategies, materials, ideas and dialogues of independent publishing to a wide variety of audiences.
**CAMP NANO and SUMMER CAMP are both generously supported by Aboveground Art Supplies**
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at The Sharon Temple, listening to Winona Zelenka play Bach’s Cello Suites Nos. 1, 3 & 6.
The location, the acoustics, the light, the heat— every element conspired to magic. The mathematics of the building are perfect. From every angle, symmetry. The arches inside the temple so plainly echoed by the shape of her cello. And outside the open windows, the June world in which I grew. At one point, a pair of birds flew inside as she played.
In one of the out-lying buildings at the temple is a cross-stitch of the lyrics to The Doxology, a hymn I used to love singing as a child and teenager. It was locked up yesterday, so I couldn’t get a photo. This little recording, sung as slowly as I could manage, cannot communicate the loveliness of the breeze in the temple, nor come close to the sound (also rigorously mathematical) of Bach.
How I wish I could make music, but even more than that, I would love to be an instrument itself, such as the cello, that invites holding.
