Grad Show 22

a selection of black line drawings depicting wildlife and iconography from the american midwest

Shannon Rose Jones

miles and miles and miles

miles and miles and miles is a body of work that draws design inspiration from the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, a region unflattened by ice during the last ice age. The works are site specific extrapolations that have been abstracted in order to trigger a process of memory recollection in the viewer. Selections of atmospheric prose, furniture objects, illustrations, and imagery are presented as snapshots of a place in an attempt to memorialize and make tangible ephemeral memories collected by the maker traveling in this vast landscape. Attention is given to the distillation of form in order to contemplate its material or atmospheric essence. Carved ash and neon light intersect to call attention to the relationship between the land and the built landscape. Rather than invoke criticism, it is a celebration of the harmony and beauty that exists between nature and human-made objects, architecture, and neon signs. A design ethos reminiscent of Aldo Leopold’s ecological land ethic is established: a working ethos that deeply appreciates the subdued landscape and materiality of place.

driftless illustrations

a small solid maple cabinet with oversized handles shaped like fish

fish cabinet

Maple, dyed and hand carved maple

20 x 12 x 26"

2021

Less than a hundredth of one percent of the world’s water is cold and pure enough to harbor trout.

Did we catch a trout that day? Maybe it was a brown trout, but it could have been a northern pike.

We took out the boat you traded for cutting down a tree. We fished until the boat started taking on water and the motor died. We had a small kicker motor to get us back while we bailed out water.

You asked me what animal I might like to become in another life. I said maybe a river trout or maybe living with my trout friends in the Kinnickinnic river, watching waders with legs in them scooch by.

In trout fishing there is a custom that you must kiss the first trout you catch and then release it. Thank you for throwing me back.

a black, planar solid wood bench covered with hand carved illustrations

carved bench

dyed and hand carved maple

24x 42 x 18"

2021

A bench inspired by the form of the Leopold Bench: a piece of vernacular furniture from the American midwest. The surface is adorned with hand carved illustrations of wildlife and road signs.

three crescent-moon shaped upholstered stools: one black, one deep green, and one white corduroy. embroidered patches are applied to the surface of all three.

moon stools

moon shaped stools in various upholstery fabrics, collected patches stitched on

20 x 20 x 18"

2021

It is what I would give you if I could, or so they say.

I try to look at it every day and make note of its phase. I think of the ones she had tattooed down her back, and the earrings I wear every day.

It is not that I understand it fully or anything. I know it controls the tides and that I was born during a waning crescent. Hours before a new moon.

I hear your voice impersonating Brooks and Dunn on karaoke. You wanted me to bend you a neon moon, so I did.

There are certain cycles we can rely on, there are still permanent revolutions that we tie ourselves to. When it all exists in nuance, fuzzy layers of confusion and misremembering—it can be comforting to focus on absolute truths.

To watch it shrink and disappear only to watch it glow bright again, soon. Sooner than you might like to imagine.

There is never enough time.

A long rectangular wooden form with an organic carved texture. A perfectly circular yellow neon protrudes from the top of the shelf.

horizon line shelf

Hand carved and dyed ash, neon light

48 x 5 x 5”

2022

I look at you and can feel your glow. I sense the heat of the flame that formed you. I hear the small bursts of electricity bringing you power. It is impossible for neon signs to be “machined”. The process requires someone who is trained to bend, a craftsperson. It is a working class job, a workload determined by marketing trends, the desires of old beer sign collectors hoping to illuminate their basements. Most people learn by apprenticing and bending for hours and hours. Burning hands, slicing fingers on sharp glass. Eventually your bent letters, miles of hollow glass tube, are bombarded with a noble gas so the Tornado Room can lure in drunk young adults to eat steak sandwiches and spill martinis Laugh and chainsmoke, illuminated by the glow that you provide. Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act moved to limit billboards and outdoor advertising to make America’s roadsides more beautiful. I agree but I also disagree: we don’t mind seeing the signs on the side of the road when they are far and few between. Few and far? Far and few. We can tell when the signs are older, a signal that they belong to a place that was conceived before we were born. We always go and hope to travel back in time. It makes me sad to watch them flicker out and die. I made them promise it was only taken down to be repaired, that the new sign was not permanent. They promised but they could have been lying.

A solid ash desk of standard proportions, with an upper ledge made out of steel to be used to store postcards or assorted ephemera.

postcard writing desk

Ash and powder coated steel

52 x 24 x 32”

2022

I built a postcard writing desk so that when this is all over I can catch up on my correspondence. It’s simple and wide open and it props up the recent letters that need responding. I hope it is an object that inspires me to sit down and write, for myself and maybe to you. It started as a tree and now it will be in my home. Someone else may want it in theirs, too, which makes me feel weird but is probably the point after all. Whenever I open the mailbox I hope I see my name written in your handwriting. Your letters are coming from the same place, because all places are the same. I am still here, always wishing you were here too.

A collection of three steel wall mounted shelves.

postcard shelves

Powder coated steel, various colors, edition of 5

24 x 3.5 x 5”

2022

Wall mounted shelves designed to hold postcards or other ephemera. Inspired by the rolling landscape of the Driftless Region, the landscape profile was laser cut out of 18 gauge steel before it was bent and tack welded into place.