Shaun Kardinal

Hand-embroidered postcard. 9 x 4 inches.

A gift for my mom.

This one was fun. I want to work with more panoramic imagery!

Hand-embroidered collage. 7-3/4 x 11 inches.

I was asked to create a piece which visually responded to a favorite poem.

Not being a poetry connoisseur, I decided to respond to lyrics from a favorite song. Being a life-long lover of music, it wasn’t easy choosing from so many amazing lyricists, but I felt immediately drawn to work by Spencer Krug, whose songwriting and musical abilities have enchanted me since I first heard Sunset Rubdown’s early EPs. (His band repertoire also includes Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, Fifths of Seven and more.)

One of my favorite bits of his lyrical output can be heard in the song All Fires, an acoustic campfire tragedy which relates the story of a flooded town, a burning love, and the desperation of survival (full lyrics with art detail below). The stirring imagery of ‘a world of water’ and burning fires led me to attempt a visual narrative with the piece–the 50/50 light/dark of it fitting with an ongoing fascination of mine. I was lucky enough to find a perfectly composed steeple image in a book of photographs published in the 80s, which I cut up before flooding and setting afire with thread…

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left: There Will Be No End, right: There Was Never a Beginning. Hand-embroidered magazines (Rolling Stone and National Geographic, March 1982). 10-1/2 x 12-1/2 inches and 7 x 9 inches

Created for a group exhibition called ‘Being There’ which explored themes of existence and the physical occupation of space.

I decided to work with something that has existed as long as I have and chose two magazines published the month I was born. I considered a lot of other publications–eBay provides!–but I liked that my parents probably would have come across these, and appreciated the way the two contrasted in content.

The pattern I sewed into the covers was taken from a gift I was given on my birthday this year. While somewhat explosive, I hoped the exact repetition might hint at the possibility of a cycle, with a method to its madness.

With this set of works I’m thinking a lot about how my birth could not really be called my beginning. Just as it took paper, ink, ideas, writers, designers and more to put together the magazines, so too is my own existence as convoluted and juxtaposed. In this regard, I cannot even say that conception was my beginning, and as Nick Cave once put it, death is not the end.

View individually: There Will Be No End / There Was Never a Beginning

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Plexiglass (40 sheets, 8 x 8 x 1/8 inches) and lightbox. 10 x 10 x 7 inches. Collaboration with Troy Gua for ‘Bloom & Collapse.’

A sculpture for the taking.

From the group exhibition statement: ‘Bloom & Collapse’ presents the collaborative work of seven pairs of artists who have come together to address concepts of decay, fragmentation and decomposition. Paired with my good friend Troy Gua, with whom I’d collaborated once before, we knew a few things immediately: our work would be comprised of many pieces which would be free for the taking; the final output would bloom under our guidance and decay gracefully into the hands of many. Additionally, we wanted to address impermanence, artistic oeuvre, and a transition toward Light.

After a few rounds of preliminary sketches and planning, we arrived at this stacked pyramid approach, which merged Troy’s love of plastic sheen with my ever-increasing fondness for simple shapes made up of many carefully organized points. With the exception of the top piece, each of the 40 plexi sheets has four holes drilled into it. Stacked, a three-dimensional pyramid of light appears on the sides; viewed from above, a strangely refracted array of holes sway with the viewer, like the following eyes of a portrait.

Lastly, while installing, we shot a time-lapse-like series of photos to show how the sheets work with one another:

Souvenir (Disambiguation) – Installation Animation – Troy Gua / Shaun Kardinal 2011 from shaun kardinal on Vimeo.

Video: Installation AnimationWe are happy to report that all 40 sheets were taken during the exhibition’s opening reception.

‘Bloom & Collapse’ shows at SOIL Gallery through February, 2011. Visit troygua.com for more of Troy’s work.

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Hand-embroidered postcard. 6 x 4 inches.

The last piece I made in 2010 was a gift for my sister.

This was, in fact, the third piece I’d attempted for her–the first failed in content, the second in design. Then I came across this vibrant postcard and knew it needed some string. It was strange working with the thick stock again, having only sewn up lithographs and book pages for months, but I liked the way the rough holes gave the shapes a dandelion feel.