Shannon Gerard
Plants you cannot kill: Tiny Cacti Crochet
Acrylic yarn, wool, polyfill and clay, 6" tall

Artist's Statement:
When a nerd talks about crochet, she is really telling you a love story.
Crochet is The One. What other material process can represent anything—any shape, dimensional object, or idea? Crochet lulls me into a state of contemplation and stillness. It is also a research tool. Modeling objects in yarn is a way to see my way through problems, or to think about how elements relate to one another in space, or to wonder about how we conceptualize the big topics like time, fear and love. Crochet is material and conceptual perfection. For me, it holds the mysterious, intuitive mathematics of everything.
All of my crocheted projects are attempts to address, to communicate and to mediate the anxieties I feel about navigating the world. I have made crochet work about frailty and disease, about gender performance, about sexuality, and about mapping human experience.
Plants You Can't Kill are attractive, quotidian objects on the surface but also speak to my insecurities and to the feeble attempts I have made to coax real fauna into life. These pretty little cacti, aloe plants, flowering pots, ferns and other botanicals look darling on the windowsill but are particularly resonant with those of us who can't get the real stuff to grow. What I want to know is; Can I crochet into coherence the essential pain and glory of being alive?


From the Press Release:
Narwhal Art Projects invites you to experience The Dazzle, a study and celebration of collection fetishism. Collaborating with over thirty different artists and assemblers, Narwhal presents a cabinet of wonders that reveals the mysteries of the world through an installation of enigmatic treasures. Inspired by early 17th century Wunderkammers, The Dazzle exists as a microcosm of our world, capturing diverse specimens from a wide array of studies including natural history, geology, mathematics, archeology, magic and mythology. Mirroring early explorers who used the Wunderkammer to showcase worldly discoveries from distant lands, The Dazzle unearths artist creations fabricated through internal mind mapping, resulting in an awe inspiring collection of the bizarre.
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