Shannon Garson makes a range of studio porcelain decorated with designs ranging from paddocks and dragonflies through to birdnests and rainforest flora.
Shannon began her career as a painter in 1985, completing a Bachelor of Visual Art from Queensland University of Technology in 1993. After graduating Shannon began decorating for innovative Brisbane Gallery Amfora.
From this her interest extended to throwing and decorating her own vessels, incorporating her skills as a visual aritist into the work.
Shannon’s exhibition work articulates landscape using domestic pots as vessels for drawings about the strange beauty and wonder to be found in the marginalized eco-systems of the littoral zone.
Details of shorelines, rock pools and coastal wallum scrub are revealed in the sgraffito and oxide drawings that crawl over the surface of these delicately thrown porcelain vessels.
The act of beach-combing, gleaning and collecting is analogous to the process used in making these works. Images, bird-footprints, tiny flowers completely covered in white hairs, the myriad detail of the landscape has been collected into marks.
A visual language mapping the experience of being in the landscape, creating a dialogue between domestic life and nature.
In addition to her porcelain design Shannon regularly contributes articles to journals and magazines including Journal of Australian Ceramics, Ceramics Art and Perception and Craft Arts International.
Her work has been profiled in lifestyle magazines Country Style and Inside Out. Shannon runs innovative workshops incorporating nature in porcelain and surface design for schools and small groups.
Shannon has been exhibiting since 1990 and now exhibits her porcelain throughout Australia and internationally. Her work is regularly picked up by new galleries, for a list of stockists please go to the links section below.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Pottery in Australia, vol 39 ,2000
Country Style, Feb- March 2002
Inside Out, Feb 2003
Ceramics Art and Perception, Vol 54, 2003/4
Craft Arts International, March 2004
Australian Journal of Ceramics, March 2005
Queensland Homes Winter 2007
Salt Magazine, Autumn 2010
Australian Journal of Ceramics, March 2009 (article on web based social media for artists)