Perimenopausal Mum 1
ceramic, denim
2019
Perimenopausal Mum 2
ceramic, twine
2019
cedar, walnut, aspen
2019
Breastival Vestibule, 2013
ripstop nylon, electricity, air
Breastival Vestibule - Little Sister, 2012
ripstop nylon, video, electricity, various objects, pillows, air
Read about Breastival Vestibule in “’It Feels Right to Me’: Queer Feminist Art Installations and the Sovereignty of the Senses” by Ann Cvetkovich published in Feminist Media Histories.
Breastival Vestibule is an installation of inflatable architecture that welcomes participants into its soft, responsive walls, aiming to exist as a temporary autonomous zone in the public sphere, a liminal space where the rules of interaction shift. Breastival Vestibule invites possibility, and celebrates resistance to the real or perceived constraints of our everyday lives.
Breastival Vestibule set about examining the practice of toplessness for people within & outside of mainstream society, occupying a variety of bodies and genders. With roots in 1970s feminisms that gave birth to an explosion of utopian subcultures & practice, 40 years later, Breastival asks: what does our current relationship to these movements have to show about our personal & cultural relationships to body? What does this articulate about sex and gender-based oppression and violence in the 21st Century?
Through a collection of responses to questions posed in workshops & questionnaires, Breastival Vestibule considers the effects of societal norms that live inside each of us & practices of resistance to both real & presumed limitations.
Breastival Vestibule revisited at Nocturne, Halifax NS, October 2016
This piece was made as an addendum to Breastival Vestibule, which was installed on the back plaza of the Public Library at 2016’s Nocturne: Art at Night Festival in Halifax. Breastival Vestibule is a piece of inflatable architecture that welcomes participants into its soft, responsive walls, aiming to exist as a temporary autonomous zone in the public sphere, a liminal space where the rules of interaction shift. Breastival Vestibule invites possibility, and celebrates resistance to the real or perceived constraints of our everyday lives.
At the 2016 Festival, by order of the Fire Marshall of Halifax, visitors were restricted from entering the sculpture. Shannon took this moment of imposed limitation and policing of bodies in public to imagine a way to expand the conversation from within the Breastival out into the plaza to meet the public. The resulting spheres resided both within the Breastival herself and also spilled out onto the large concrete arena of the plaza.
Text written upon the pieces served to physically move participants around the space, contemplating the now almost 25 year old text by Zoe Leonard, “I Want a Dyke for President”. Festival goers were seen walking around the spheres and reading out loud the words to this still deeply relevant and provocative poem, while a Security guard stationed at the enticing entrance to the Breastival was asked to keep attendees from entering (they entered anyway). This year’s Nocturne occurred on the literal eve of the Canadian election and the figurative eve of one of the most conflicted US Presidential races of the Nation’s history.
One week workshop and ongoing expanding collaboration with art-design & architecture group: MYCKET, Stockholm, Sweden
Included in Girls Like Us Issue 13: When Walls Speak
Queerstories‘ Lezbian Popcorn Cart is a mobile monument to queer hystories. With a nod to lesbian cultural corn traditions, and an opportunity to repeatedly say the word ‘lesbian’ out loud, The Lezbian Popcorn Cart engages participants in conversation with a little bit of anecdotal queer herstory gracing each freshly popped bag.
Queerstories is a collaboration with Olivia Robinson and Dr. Kate Drabinski
A love letter to the community of San Juan de Limay, Nicaragua
colored plastics, electricity, air
2014
Commissioned by The Creative Alliance for their annual Great Halloween Lantern Parade and created in collaboration with students at Access Art, Baltimore MD
2014
Plastic, umbrella, nylon, fan, air, electricity
2013
Small treasures fashioned from branches fallen in my yard or wood scraps otherwise inherited.
Featuring Texas woods like cedar elm, american elm, pecan, eastern red cedar, juniper, hackberry, live oak, mesquite as well as other non-native species that have found their way into my shop.
Tiny vessels.
Hair clips.
turned wood, denim
Commissioned by Rude Mechs for their production of I’ve Never Been So Happy
2011
