Shaun Kardinal

Commissioned by Australian band Civilians

I was asked to create a piece along the lines of Montana, featuring a prominent C that the band could use in posters and other promotional work.

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Commissioned by Australia’s Yen Magazine

I was asked to illustrate a favorite destination for their travel issue. I chose Montana and created this piece in the predominant style of my latest series, Connotations.

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This new series takes a leap from the minimalist compositions made last year.

Simply embroidering postcards alone, I was able to achieve a wide array of compositions–but ultimately I wanted to work bigger and try more elaborate patterns and shapes with the thread. First, I needed larger imagery, which, most notably in this series, I found in the beautiful pages of 1950s LIFE magazines. A long-time fascination with radial compositions and mandalas led to these radiating layers of geometric collage.

Unlike most of  my previous embroidered works, which were designed and punctured from the back (almost arbitrarily in relation to the imagery the thread would overlay), these layered pieces required a lot of attention paid to every element, in order to keep things lined up and symmetrical.

I enjoyed distorting and juxtaposing these mid-century images. It was a challenging series, and I’m looking forward to creating more in this style.

This series debuted in a solo exhibition at Joe Bar in April, 2012. Available works in the shop!

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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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