shannon garson
Maleny, Queensland, Australia
Shannon Garson with a piece from her Depths of Light, 2019.
Shannon Garson, Bush Picnic Set, 2018. Wheel-thrown porcelain and stoneware, drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired. Teapot: 14 cm H x 22 cm W x 22 cm D
Shannon Garson, Porcelain Spoon, January 2020..Wheel-thrown porcelain, drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired. 4 cm H x 8 cm W x 15 cm L
I live in a small town in Jinibarra country in the subtropical mountains of Queensland Australia. Lockdown happened after a brutal hot, dry summer when it seemed the whole of the East Coast of Australia was on fire. Every day of December and January we woke up to smoke in the air and an orange haze in the sky while we waited for the monsoon to begin and the fires to be quenched. Lockdown began as the last wisps of smoke drifted into the blackened landscape. Maleny is in rainforest and for the first time in my lifetime our creek in town ran dry, the platypus forced into the last remaining muddy swimming holes, the rainforest raining leaves into a thick, crunchy layer underfoot.
I felt that my whole life had prepared me for lockdown as I continued working in the studio and the rains started. The landscape came alive and weirdly there was an explosion of butterflies, green, blue, pale yellow drifting in fluttering clouds across the garden, it was like a Disney movie with an undercurrent of menace as the news bought the spread of the virus closer. I made work for an online exhibition, the beauty and terror of the summer coming out in my drawings on vessels with no foot—the rocking, unstable forms echoing the unmoored emotional landscape of the summer and autumn.
As always making vessels and drawings makes sense of the world and although those vessels rock and move, the drawings raging across their surfaces, they are held in check by the beauty of translucent porcelain and the centrifugal force that forms them, a smooth circular rim holding tension in a fluctuant form.
Shannon Garson, Depths of Light, 2019. Wheel-thrown porcelain drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired Largest vessel: 40 cm H x 50 cm W x 50 cm D
During the Lockdown, Shannon Garson worked from her home in Jinibarra Country in subtropical Queensland, making work that responds to the terrible bushfires of summer 2019
Shannon Garson, Fireground, 2020. Wheel-thrown porcelain, drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired. 22 cm H x 24 cm W x 23 cm D
Shannon Garson, Beauty and Terror, 2020. Wheel-thrown porcelain, drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired. 16 cm H x 26 cm W x 26 cm D (bowl on right)
Shannon Garson, The O Horizon, 2020. Wheel-thrown porcelain, drawings in terra sigillata, glaze, underglaze and oxides, thrice fired. 23 cm H x 26 cm W x 26 cm D (largest vessel)