Shannon Stratton - Visual Art Forums, March 30th, 2015

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• published: 08 Apr 2015
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March 30th, 2015 Established in 2003, Threewalls has grown from a start-up exhibition space to a vital visual arts organization supporting contemporary art through solo exhibitions, residencies, grants, publications, conferences and commissioning programs. With Green Lantern Press she founded and published (via Threewalls) PHONEBOOK, a guide to contemporary independant and artist-run projects, now in its 4th volume, and The Artists Run Chicago Digest, a companion, appraisal and extension to the exhibition of the same name at The Hyde Park Center. She is a co-founder of The Common Field, a national alliance of and advocacy group for small-scale visual arts platforms and their producers. Stratton writes, curates exhibitions and other experimental projects, and relishes opportunity for administrative and pedagogical experiments. Projects include: Resonating Bodies, The Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Ps & Qs, The Glassel School of Art, Houston and The Hyde Park Arts Center, Chicago (with Jeff Ward); Things to Be Next To at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas/Threewalls, Chicago (with Kate Hackman); Bellwether at Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Reskilling at Western Front Exhibitions, Vancouver, Canada (with Luanne Martineau) and Gestures of Resistance: Craft, Performance, and the Politics of Slowness (with Judith Leemann) a panel discussion and exhibition at the College Art Association, Dallas, Texas and The Portland Museum of Craft, Portland, Oregon. In the summers she works with her partner Joe Jeffers on 8550 OHIO in SE Appalachian Ohio, coordinating projects including residencies, festivals and site-specific architecture. Her "weird social experiment" (to quote one of her students), Party As Form, a class in group dynamics and transitional spaces, was hosted by Ox Bow School of Art in Michigan in 2013 & 2014. In 2010 Stratton was named one of the top 5 most vital people in the visual arts in Chicago by NewCity. In 2011 she was a fellow of the NAMAC Visual Arts Leadership Institute and a finalist for the Chicago Community Trust Emerging Leader Award. Stratton was 1 of 9 leaders in the arts featured in the Chicago Tribune 2011 Chicagoans of the Year. In 2013 Newcity named her one 50 "Visual Vanguards." Stratton teaches in Art History, Theory & Criticism and Fiber & Material Studies departments at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was appointed Critical Studies Fellow at The Cranbrook Academy of Art for fall 2012. In 2013 she was a recipient of the Alberta College of Art Board of Governors' Alumni Award of Excellence. Current research and upcoming projects include: Threewalls relocation and opening of adjacent speakeasy, The General Idea; curatorial residecies at Elsewhere in collaboration with Joe Jeffers and at The Kinsey Institute in conjunction with Threewalls; residency at Cannonball, Miami (dates TBD); exhibition "A Chain of Conspicuous Absences" (on the limits of exchangeability). Shannon curated the 1st retrospective of Faith Wilding's painting and drawing work at Threewalls in January 2014. The exhibition will travel to other locations, including Rhodes College, Memphis, TN and The Pasadena Armory, Pasadena, CA in September 2015. This talk is part of the Visual Art Forums, presented by the Faculty of Visual Art + Material Practice and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. It is free and open to the public.