S T O R I E S
S H A W N A C R O S S is an abstract painter who strings together syllables and palette knives to re-create the images that run through her subconscious. The sudden urge to place words together often leaves her waking with ink stained pillows and a collection of tattered papers stuffed under couch cushions and piles of paint tubes. She also runs B O R O U G H G A L L E R Y & S T U D I O in Burlington, VT, where she weaves other artists' work together to create unified, visual stories.
T H E G I R L writes a lot, and she has a specific love for abstracted phrases and prose that create vivid images in the mind. Actually, you could say that her paintings pick up where her writing ends, and the two are inexplicably intertwined. The weird names she's given her paintings (seriously, "BREATH LIKE TRAIN TRACKS?")? They've come directly from the writing she was working on while making that specific piece!
S H E ' S been published a few times and every now and then ventures to the POE JAM in Burlington and says she'll do some spoken work "next time", and she's currently working on a children's book collaboration with a friend (which you can read about in the blog).
W O R D S , words, words. This busy little painter just likes them. A lot. The more poignant and the more imaginative the better. If you're feeling lucky, you can ask her to send you a bedtime story, and she just might do it. Maybe. If you're running short on time, never-never ever-mention JD Salinger around her; it's just a bad idea. She'll gush for an hour, telling you that every time she reads Uncly Wiggly in Connecticut she cries harder than she did the last time, and that Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, is probably the most important book any artist could ever read. This always leads, somehow, to a conversation involving Anais Nin, Dave Eggers, James Baldwin, Aldous Huxley, her love affair with E. E. Cummings, and both her Larry Darrell and Choose Your Own Adventure syndromes. She'll probably try to push This Place You Return to is Home, by Kirsty Gunn on you, too. (She also has a gigantic stack of VOGUEs that she hides in the bathtub whenever she has company. Oh, words!)
