Artist: Shanell Papp of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
Interview 116: For this interview Toronto fibre artist
Catherine Heard, contributed some questions.
Interview curated and published by Gareth Bate and Dawne Rudman.
Subscribe to Artist Interviews here...
Shanell Papp lives and works in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She maintains a labour intensive studio practice, curates for the local library and teaches sessionally, conducting workshops for the University of Lethbridge, the Galt Museum and Archives, and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG), all in Lethbridge. Papp spends many hours at her Grandmothers junk store and with her large family. She received her BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2006 and her MFA from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 2010.
 |
Artist: Shannell Papp. |
Tell us about your work
I have macabre interests and I make labour intensive/detailed/tedious things. I enjoy working with uncomfortable subjects over a long duration. I like to think about uncomfortable things and prepare myself for the future. The work is my personal inventory and research. I love researching, libraries, museums, off-kilter history, the origins of science/medicine, human anatomy, enlightenment thinkers, crime and mummified bodies. This is all part of my research. I like discovering new things everyday and I comb the Internet for interesting art and anatomical stuff. I run a Facebook page and a Tumblr site called BAWDY to organize my research.
 |
The Hunting Party, fabric, paint, yarn, rope, thread, clay, fur, beads, glass eyes, paper, mannequins, 2013, 6.5ft tall x 12 ft crochet, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidery, pattern design. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
The Hunting Party, fabric, paint, yarn, rope, thread, clay, fur, beads, glass eyes, paper, mannequins, 2013, 6.5ft tall x 12 ft crochet, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidery, pattern design. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
You learned to crochet when you were quite young, and in previous interviews you describe spending a lot of time playing with materials and learning craft techniques while you were growing up. When did you realize that these craft techniques could be artistic vehicles?
I never thought of textiles as an artistic medium, but when I was in Art School at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta. I was shown examples of textile work and was actively encouraged to use these skills by Prof Don Gill. He was particularly helpful and encouraging, he actually seemed interested in the work. He made it seem valuable by talking about my early work seriously. For me the University of Lethbridge is stacked with wonderful professors in the Art Department Mary Kavanagh, Michael Campbell, Glenn Machinnon, Denton Fredrickson, Anne Dymond and Anne Martin.
 |
The Hunting Party, fabric, paint, yarn, rope, thread, clay, fur, beads, glass eyes, paper, mannequins, 2013, 6.5ft tall x 12 ft crochet, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidery, pattern design. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
 |
The Hunting Party, fabric, paint, yarn, rope, thread, clay, fur, beads, glass eyes, paper, mannequins, 2013, 6.5ft tall x 12 ft crochet, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidery, pattern design. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
In your artistic practice the methods that predominate are craft and fibre techniques, but you also have made significant use of video and comics/graphic novels. Is there a connection – conceptual or otherwise – between these three aspects of your practice?
I think I just gravitate toward mediums that are laboured, tedious, lonely, which comics and video are ... but I don't think the work is laboured or tedious. I love the process and I like working.
Comics appeal to me because they are difficult and layered work. I tend to work with comics if I want to tell a story mostly biographical and personal. I think comics are a really good medium for difficult subjects, since there is an intimacy with reading. It seems like a private conversation with a friend.
Video appeals to me since it is often editing in a darkened room. I use video when I want to be very clear with my intention. Video and film are like hypnotism, in that video takes over several senses at once.
 |
Lab, yarn, thread, 2006, life sized, crochet, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
What specific historic artists have influenced your work?
I love painters Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, Francis Bacon, Casper David Friedrich, Vesuvias, Edvard Munch, and Magritte.
Photographers Eugene Agete, Lizette Model, Weegee, Joel-Peter Witkin. These artists are interesting to me as I am attracted to the grotesque.
 |
Lab, yarn, thread, 2006, life sized, crochet, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
 |
Lab, yarn, thread, 2006, life sized, crochet, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
 |
Confetti 2, Confetti Series, 20hx28w inches, silk collage, collage of silk pieces, machine stitched and mounted on painted canvas. Photo: Carmella Karijo Rother. |
In your interview for Velvet Highway, you mentioned the persistence of the Art/Craft debate in the academic world, and the tendency for your professors and peers at the University of Lethbridge to assume that a female artist working in craft is making a comment on femininity and domesticity. Why do you think these associations continue?
In my interview for Velvet Highway, I talked about how the University of Saskatchewan was caught in the art/craft mindset and not the University of Lethbridge. The University of Lethbridge by contrast was, and is, really very open to textiles as an art medium. The University of Lethbridge never pigeonholed my work; it is a fantastic art school.
Otherwise I think the association between art/craft still exists because some artists work from these associations and they want to work from established territory. Whereas I am more interested in class struggles, the industrial revolution, medical history and the enlightenment. I don't associate my practice with domesticity as my Mother and Grandmother never had time to make textiles. I am from a single parent family with four kids. My Mother was constantly working and my Grandmother ran a junk store.
I make things in order to be self-sufficient and independent. I learn how to make things so I don't have to buy things. I like being independent. This way of thinking is probably closer to how life is on the Canadian Prairies; I live in a wide-open desert with mostly chain stores. It is bleak and the junk shops are filled with mass produced crap from the last 20 years. Not all of Alberta is a wealthy place and many people struggle here.
 |
Ghost, paper, glue, glass eyes, thread, 2010, 5.4ft, crochet. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
Is there a way we can move the debate forward, or reframe it to make it more productive?
I think talking about art/craft mediums in terms of gender or art/craft is limiting and not interesting. I think people should stop limiting textiles, by talking about textiles in a limited way.
 |
Pressure Suit, Felt, yarn, thread, wood, 2010, wearable 2ft, freeform knitting, Machine Sewing, Hand sewing, basic carpentry. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
 |
Pressure Suit, Felt, yarn, thread, wood, 2010, wearable 2ft, freeform knitting, Machine Sewing, Hand sewing, basic carpentry. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
What specific contemporary artists have influenced your work?
I am interested in the Young British Artists (YBA). Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing and Tracey Emin. I also like Joe Coleman for his research interests and personal museum building.
For Canadian Artists I like Shary Boyle (she also makes comics) and David Altmejd, they make fantastical life size or figural sculpture. The work is also laboured.
I am an avid horror movie watcher and I love the classics: Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Misery, The Thing, The Fly, The Dark Crystal, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Maniac, Street Trash, Dead Ringers, Nightbreed, Possession, Kids.
 |
Loner 1, Vinyl, glass eyes, thread, paper, cardboard, poly fill, 2010, 8.5ft tall, Pattern drafting, machine sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
What are some of the themes your work addresses through craft techniques?
I am more interested in the human body, class struggles, the industrial revolution, the machine age, manufacturing medical history, labour, time, death, atheism and the enlightenment.
 |
Horse, Garbage bags, Thread, Paper, Cardboard, 2009, 6ft tall, Pattern drafting, machine sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Loner 2, Fabric, twine, fur, thread, dye, glass eyes, carboard, paper, poly fill, 2010, 6ft tall, Pattern Drafting, Machine sewing, Crochet. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
What impact do you think DIY culture (Etsy, for example) and artistic culture have on one another? Is it a two way street?
I don't know. I like to think that artists are looking at DIY culture and DIY is looking at Art … but then again I don't see them as being too different, as my work tends to exist in both places. I think of art and DIY as one and the same thing. For me art is always doing it by yourself.
 |
Loner 3, Fur, thread, paper, cardboard, wire, glass eyes, 2010, 7ft tall Pattern Drafting, Machine sewing, Crochet. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
Your work brings to mind Allyson Mitchell's practice – was she one of your influences? Were there others?
I love Allyson's work, but I only became aware of her work in 2009 and I talked about her work in my graduate thesis. I love her work and we share materials in common, but i think her work is moving in an opposite direction in terms of ideas. I think my work is closer to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Mike Kelley and Joseph Beuys.
 |
Anxiety, Fabric, gesso, pins, 2010,10ft x 5ft, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
 |
Anxiety, Fabric, gesso, pins, 2010, 10ft x 5ft, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
Can you tell me about the mythology that underlies the characters of The Loners?
The loners are a group of people who, for whatever reason, shoved the world away. I think of bikers, metalheads, punk kids, Hutterites, religious cults, street people, drunks, drug addicts, survivalists, etc. People who leave mainstream society and choose to live on the fringes. Michel Foucault describes these spaces/worlds as heterotopias.
l am kind of like a loner myself. As a child, my family often moved several times a year and I think I became very independent because of this. I also spend a great deal of time alone.
 |
Blood pool, velvet, thread, poly fill, 2008, various 1 inch to 20 inches, machine sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
Anxiety was exhibited alongside the The Loners – is it part of their origin myth or their spiritual home?
Anxiety is not a place, it should be thought of as an interior space, a crystallization that grows over time. The pins are pains/distress that build up over a lifetime. This accumulation can either harm or protect them. I think when people suffer losses and rejection they will either succumb to it or overcome it.
So, you will either learn to be stronger or tear yourself apart … Life just hurts you and armours you.
 |
Conductor, Knit Balaclava, pins, 2013, 12 inches tall, sewing. Photo: Shanell Papp. |
In works like Opera Cave and Lab what are your criteria for choosing your materials?
I think I work with these materials because I like to spend a lot of time alone working. I like the process. I arrived at working this way, since I was permitted to take yarn from my grandmothers' junk store as a child. It is no different than someone who draws or paints really.
 |
Bonebook, thread, canvas, paper, 2007, life sized, embroidery, drawing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Bonebook, thread, canvas, paper, 2007, life sized, embroidery, drawing. Photo: Shanell Papp |
What interests you about the World of Threads festival?
I get the fibre artist interviews, and I try to read as much as I can, as I am interested in other textile artists. I am also just interested in how things are made.
Tell us about your studio.
I have two studio spaces, a small space for drawing and digital stuff at home and a larger place away from home for storage and making larger work.
 |
Large Sculpture Studio and Storage Space, 2013. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Large Sculpture Studio and Storage Space, 2013. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Small home studio/computer space, 2013. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Small home studio/computer space, 2013. Photo: Shanell Papp |
 |
Small home studio/computer space, 2013. Photo: Shanell Papp |
Is there something else you would like us to know about you or your work that we have not covered?
I think my work has had an interesting life on the Internet, which has been exciting and depressing. On one hand, I have met a lot of kind people and on the other hand I get frequent requests to make free things or give away patterns for free. It is tiresome responding to these requests, as people think of my works as cute decorations for Halloween. Which just makes me think that many people don't think the same way I do, which is ok, but not very interesting to me.
Subscribe To Artist Interviews here...
Interviews published by Gareth Bate & Dawne Rudman.
If you'd like to make a donation to help support our
"Weekly Fibre Artist Interviews" series, you can do so here.
Disclosure: This article incorporates 'affiliate links' to Amazon.com
Thanks for your support. Click here to shop at Amazon.com