Shannon Stratton

Shannon Stratton is the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC. With specific interest in fiber/material studies, regionalism, art activism, and ideas surrounding amateurism and craft, Stratton responded to the materiality and atmosphere of Emery Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine.

Stratton collaborated with the Arts Center on An Encounter With Presence. For the exhibition, she drew connections between Bertoia’s Sonambient metal sculptures and Blagdon’s “pretties” made of aluminum foil and baling wire. Although operating from very different vantage points, Blagdon and Bertoia both built deeply moving environments designed to connect them with nature and its energies. She facilitated the inclusion of Harry Bertoia’s “Sonambient” sound and sculptures and an original composition imagining the sound inside Blagdon’s art environment by sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.