Brandon artist Janet Shaw-Russell participated in a reception at the Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM) last Friday. Her collection named Sheltered is now on display at Gallery 1.
A professional interior designer, in her artwork she examines the connection between home and the body, she explores how our dwellings shape us and how we shape our dwellings.
She creates anatomical images on domestic items such as wallpaper or skin-like textures of sewing patterns for sculpted hinges.
鈥淚 do see the body as home,鈥� said Shaw-Russell in an interview with the EAGM. 鈥淭his series reveres the body which paradoxically both shelters and fails us.鈥�
Some works displayed at the EAGM deal with the body鈥檚 strength, while others open a conversation about the body鈥檚 fragility.
Shaw-Russell uses graphite and coloured pencils creating art pieces in which 鈥渉ome and the body become metaphors for the life cycle,鈥� as she worded it in her artist statement.
After 40 years in interior design when she would measure, touch and see bones of homes to then transpose the information into architectural blueprints, Shaw-Russell turned her focus to an art career in 2010. She applied her experience and interior design process to a treasured home in Winnipeg that was leaving her family after many years. The collection of art pieces later toured seven venues in Manitoba.
Her focus then turned towards anatomy and the human bones and organs. A new collection started from a personal place with her father, a medical doctor and a historian, passing away from lung cancer at 55 having never smoked, and her mother, a home economist and a writer, who passed away from leukemia at 66.
鈥淚 gathered medical textbooks, some from my father鈥檚 collection. I referenced anatomical atlases; I studied photographs of the human body. Stacks of sewing patterns filled my studio. Most were women鈥檚 dress or skirt patterns, but some were medical uniform patterns,鈥� recalled Shaw-Russell at the reception.
Her interest in the human body grew throughout the years when she partnered with biologists, neuroscientists and anthropology professors to expand her scientific knowledge and connect her art with a wide variety of disciplines.
For one of the projects the anthropology prof laid out a female skeletal teaching individual from the anatomical teaching collection at Brandon University's Anthropology Department. She would paint it bone by bone.
鈥淚 really invested a lot of time and myself into creating this work. And to have the honour to be able to do that was really special,鈥� said Shaw-Russell. 鈥淚t took me about 16 months. And just to have that opportunity was very special. And the fact that I was working from a female skeletal teaching individual.鈥�
One vertebra was missing; so Shaw-Russell decided to draw a grid on the paper to mark the place of the missing piece.
For the next year, she will be working alongside with a neuroscientist to produce artwork. There will be seven such teams and artists鈥� work will be displayed at the Buhler Gallery at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. Shaw-Russell鈥檚 focus will be fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Sheltered will be on display at the EAGM until March 20.
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