A B O U T
With a foundation in studio craft and painting and over 20 years experience organizing exhibitions, events and other cultural platforms, Shannon Stratton’s practice is a culmination of diffuse experiments and experiences borne out of an insatiable curiosity for the why and the how the world is processed by artists and makers.
Working in a primarily collaborative and context-responsive fashion, her practice always attempts to make sense of the interrelatedness of each expression: whether curating, making, teaching, writing, building and/or leading an arts organization, what ties this work together is an approach to problems as material, working and tending with what is at hand, embracing inventiveness and change, making and doing for the next generation, and learning to hold lightly one’s work in the hopes that it might be generative for others.
Stratton was trained in fiber and painting, with an MFA in studio art. In 2003 she co-founded the artist-run organization, Threewalls (Chicago), where she was artistic and then executive director for 12 years. At Threewalls, she organized exhibitions with over 100 artists, including Cauleen Smith, William Cordova, Claire Pentecost, Dani Leventhal, Betsy Odom, Edie Fake, Zach Cahill and Daniel Barrow. With Threewalls she co-created The Propeller Fund award in collaboration with Gallery 400 for artist’s self-organizing; conceived and published 4 volumes of PHONEBOOK, a national guide to grass-roots and artist-run organizations across the US; and co-organized the first Hand-in-Glove conference which would lead to the co-founding of Common Field (2013-2021), a national organization in support of artist-focused organizations.
Her curatorial work spans her time at Threewalls, curatorial appointments and independent projects. In 2010 she co-curated the exhibition Gestures of Resistance with artist Judith Leemann at the former Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR. The exhibition examined craft as a verb, whose political power lies in its process, by presenting a group of artists who used craft as action in making performance, social practice and pedagogical work. Featuring Theaster Gates, Cat Mazza, Ehren Tool, Mung Lar Lam, Anthea Black, Carole Lung and Sara Black/John Preus. In 2014 she organized Faith Wilding: Fearful Symmetries for Threewalls, Chicago. The exhibition, the first retrospective of Wilding’s work, toured to Rhodes College, Memphis TN and The University of Clear Lake - Houston as well as being expanded for presentation at The Pasadena Armory for the Arts in California and The Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon. Stratton edited the monograph, Faith Wilding: Fearful Symmetries which is published by Intellect Books.
From 2015-2019 she was Chief Curator at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Over her tenure at MAD, she launched the Burke Prize, 1st Site and programmed 35 exhibitions at MAD, including curating: Tanya Aguiñiga: Craft & Care; Atmosphere for Enjoyment: Harry Bertoia’s Environment for Sound; Coille Hooven: Tell it By Heart; Roger Brown: Virtual Still Lifes; Ebony G. Patterson: …buried again to carry on growing; In Time: The Rhythm of the Workshop; Anne Lindberg: the eye’s level and Sonic Arcade: Shaping Space with Sound. She worked with The John Michael Kohler Arts Center as the interim Senior Curator between 2019-2020, developing the exhibition season On Being Here and There, curating the exhibitions Between You and Me, EDM House and Inscriptions of an Immense Theater. Prior to this position, she contributed the exhibition Even thread has a speech to the series Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe and An Encounter with Presence (Emory Blagdon, Harry Bertoia and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe) for the series The Road Less Travelled.
Her independent practice is most evident in events and projects that stretch the sense of a what exhibitions or curatorial work is or can do. The project, Party As Form, (initially a class in 2012, 2014 and 2018 at Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residecy) culminated in 2024 as a residency at PRAKSIS Olso co-hosted with Kelly Lloyd. The residency concluded as a series of online talks and two publications in collaboration with PRAKSIS Presents edited by Rachel Withers and Nicholas J. Jones and Dilettante Army edited by Sara Cluggage with both co-edited by Matilda Moors.
Her current endeavor, tête-à-tête-à-tête, is 150 sq. foot exhibition space for 2 viewers and two (but actually three) works of art. The project is an invitation to visitors to gift their attention to art work and conversation without distraction and be open to what emerges. Programming is constraint based around a single word prompt and the conceit of the tête-à-tête chair, created anew for each exhibition, and situated in the space to allow guests to sit in intimate conversation with the art and each other.
Stratton has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2005, where she currently serves as the coordinator of the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Painting and Drawing. She has been core faculty in the Warren Wilson MA in Critical & Historical Craft Studies as well as a Critical Studies Fellow at The Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has written for artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, art journals and other publications throughout her career.
Stratton is the Executive Director of Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in Saugatuck, MI; splitting her time between Michigan and Chicago.
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