Shannon Garden-Smith, Snail-work (for the lake), Unfixed, pigmented sand, 98’ x 22’, October 2024. Exhibited in “Cat’s Cradle” curated by Danica Pinteric for Nuit Blanche, Tkaronto/Toronto. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Everyone is invited to come and hear Shannon Garden-Smith speak on Monday, December 1 at noon in the Critical Media Lab (East Campus Hall 1205) or on zoom at https://uwaterloo.zoom.us/j/98602191863?pwd=TaQrvrWj0bTtB9aD0vfVoDiN6V5TNH.1.
Shannon Garden-Smith is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto of Scottish and Irish settler heritage. Garden-Smith is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Art at York University, having previously earned an MFA at the University of Guelph and Honours BA at the University of Toronto. Primarily working across sculpture and installation, Garden-Smith engages with the mutability and poetics of the lithic environment. She seeks to unsettle naturalized relationships to its extraction, drawing on sand and stone’s ability to hold complex possibilities for time, memory, and different futures. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with projects at OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Nuit Blanche (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), The Goldfarb Gallery at York University (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Centre Clark (Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, QC), Patel Brown (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), The Bows (Mohkínstsis/Calgary, AB), Oxygen Art Centre (Nelson, BC), Franz Kaka (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Gallery TPW (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Pumice Raft (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), TIER: The Institute for Endotic Research (Berlin) and elsewhere. Her practice has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC), and Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She was a 2025 finalist for the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize.