ARTIST DEVELOPMENT

EXHIBITION AND COLLECTION PLACEMENT STRATEGY

GRANT WRITING / BOOK DISTRIBUTION / CONTRACT ASSESSMENT / PRESS RELEASES  

 

 

Shawn Hall is a contemporary Renaissance artist, well versed in photography, video, costume design, musical performance, installation art, and perhaps best known for her abstract paintings. Entrenched in making innovative work for over 30 years, Hall has taught at major universities, participated in residencies, had many small gallery shows, been included in museum exhibitions, and recently published a catalogue of her current work, but is now seeking broader representation and more substantial acknowledgment from respected professionals within the art world.

 

Although Hall is an established artist, who is working at a very high level, incredibly motivated and focused on seeking out all appropriate professional opportunities, she is not where she wants to be and is seeking professional parity. We are working with her to identify specialized partnerships, assisting her with grant writing and press releases, assessing contracts, distributing catalogues, making sure the appropriate curators, gallerists and collectors are taking note, and strategizing about exhibitions and collection placement.

 

Following on the heels of her installation -- How to Build a Forest at Vanderbilt University March 28 – 29, 2014, she will continue her Nashville tour with her second solo exhibition at The Red Arrow Gallery, www.theredarrowgallery.com. The following is the press release for her upcoming exhibition.

 

em·a·nate (of something abstract but perceptible) New Orleans artist Shawn Hall opens her solo exhibition ‘EMANATOR’ at The Red Arrow Gallery at 6PM in East Nashville, TN on April 5th, 2014 and a very special event with the artist on April 19th, 2014

 

Shawn Hall’s abstract paintings are fixed animations -- freeze frames of non-static blobs, shafts, bubbles, coils, cells, and transparent cavities floating, pulsing, dripping, stabbing and emanating from their own spaces to construct new worlds. These objects or subjects live somewhere between the realm of fantasy and pseudoscience and leave us wondering if we are looking with a microscopic or macroscopic lens.

 

It is hard to imagine when we walk across a grassy field, lift a flower to our nose, or pick up a seashell that within these natural everyday objects exist tiny universes of multi-functional layers, patterns, sensuous colors, and delicate forms sometimes in constant motion. We are so caught up in our social media and electronic culture, that we often overlook common forms in our environment, let alone contemplate what lies beneath.

 

Shawn Hall’s work has to do with the value of looking. Her abstract paintings are quietly halting and they force us to explore reality more closely. Hall, in fact, spends a great deal of time looking, photographing, reading, sitting, thinking, and looking some more, and although she has a background in science, her paintings are not merely depictions of the microbiologic world. She approaches her painting practice purely and intuitively, sitting in front of a blank support without a formula, without a diagram, or a pre-determined concept or intellectual strategy. She waits and paints as it comes to her – one form building on another, one color layered the other, moving things around to create new relationships.

 

Shawn Hall was born in Ann Arbor, MI, and has lived and worked in New Orleans for the past 16 years. She holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art where she was a Patricia Harris Fellow, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an AS in Science from Delta College in MI (whose underpinnings have never left her). She has been in residence at School 33 in Baltimore, in NYC through the LMCC, in Los Angeles at 18th Street Art Center, and recently at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico. Exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Wolfson Gallery at Miami Dade, FL, N.A.M.E. in Chicago, The Hewitt Gallery and Bronx River Art Center in NYC, Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY, G.U.M+D Gallery in Dallas, TX, Williams Tower Gallery in Houston, TX, and Chateau de La Napoule, in Mandelieu, France. Her work has been reviewed nationally in Art Papers, New Art Examiner, and dialogue. She is a part of the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Linklaters Corporate collection in NYC, and numerous private collections throughout the United States and Europe.