Shan Leah

Shannon’s work often tackles themes of identity, aging, and the inevitable loss of time. Interested in how the space we create around ourselves—and the items we collect—define us, she frequently returns to topics of nostalgia, and whether we are sentimental or succumb to regret.

 

As a multi-disciplinary artist, Shannon works concurrently in three very diverse mediums: scratchboard, encaustics, and film & experimental photography. The process of moving from one medium to the next allows her to experience common artistic practices such as shading, mass, balance and movement, through very different eyes, and weave each experience into other mediums.

 

Shannon has participated in a number of gallery shows in multiple states, from New York to Seattle. In 2017, she was a recipient of the Impact Returns Grant, awarded to artists whose work has potential to impact the art world at large and in the future, for a portion of her collection, “In Times Of Trouble”. This collection showcased infamous photographs from the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s created entirely in scratchboard. Included in the final grant collection was an ambitious project inspired by an image of the liberation of WWII concentration camp, Buchenwald. This piece measured 36”x48”, and was an assemblage of thirty-five 5x5” individual squares of scratchboard.

 

Shannon’s work has been published by Out Of Step books, Emboss Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine, Black + White Magazine, and Black & White Photography magazine. During the Summer of 2019, she travelled upstate New York to study traditional Civil War era wet plate collodion photography under John Coffer, one of the few remaining masters of this dangerous and nearly-extinct craft.

 

Surrounded by an endless supply of pens, papers, paints, fabrics and clays, Shannon grew up in the Florida Keys and was taught proper wheel-throwing techniques before mastering her shoe laces. 

 

She finds perfection dreadfully boring.