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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7 posts tagged ocad
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**
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.
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)
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!
Several times in the past weeks, I have been moved to tears thinking about the enormous impact of Jack Layton’s life on so many of us. He exemplified for me what it means to be a true visionary leader. Last week a colleague commented that he hopes other politicians will take note of how thirsty people are for genuine, deep connections. I wholeheartedly agree. With school starting again, I feel privileged to carry the practice of Jack’s optimism into my work and hope I can muster one fraction of the enthusiasm he had for life, the commitment he made to change, and the interest he showed in other people.
Last term, my students challenged me to learn the ukulele, and I have been practicing a little on-and-off throughout the summer. I am still quite clunky as I have no teacher but the internet (and earnestness). After standing in attendance at Jack’s funeral, and hearing Stephen Page’s rendition of Hallelujah, I was inspired to try playing it too.
This is for you, Jack. I love you. And for you, O-kids. I love you even more.
Click the bar up above to hear my broken little version.
Kyle Murray - Kyle's Letter to Art
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASHIONISTAS is a blog that collects all the best submissions from my students at OCAD University. It was started in a course titled Text & Image in 2011. The thoughtful, often moving responses to course assignments were too good to keep inside the classroom and inspired me to begin sharing works and ideas generated in all of my classes. Students, RTW!
The attached audio file is a song written and performed by Kyle Murray in response to the challenge of writing a letter to Art.
The blog title was inspired by Woody Guthrie’s famous warning:
