Artist Member
Dragonfly
Urn Book
Licensing
Carolyn Shattuck 
BIO
The artist was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She trained as a nurse and worked in Psychiatry. When she moved to the United States in 1971, she began her art career. While living in New Hampshire her husband was drafted into the Vietnam war. She and her husband spent three years in Okinawa where she developed an appreciation for Japanese prints.
Several years later, she completed her studies by graduating from Bard College with an M.F.A in Painting. She organized an exhibition with three artists called, “A Country of Souls”. The purpose of the traveling show was to develop an awareness of the mystery of death and dying issues. The discovery of the intriguing folk art of the Puritans viewed by visiting New England cemeteries generated a lifelong vocabulary, which has threaded itself throughout her work in Book Arts and Works on Paper. Many University Collections including The Smithsonian Museum have collected her books.
Carolyn lives in Vermont where she teaches and makes Books that relate to social and environmental issues
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Everyday, I sift through mounds of printed, digital, and visual information, deciding what should be stored in my brain. Trying to make life simpler and more transparent, working through the chaos, has been a metaphor in my life and art.
My life presents itself from many points of view, and my books speak from my voice as a psychiatric nurse, a mother, and a person responding to environmental and interpersonal issues. In developing my art, I take in life’s stimuli and wait for my mind to synthesize what is relevant. An idea may prepare itself for months until, like a seed, it germinates: and like a biological seed, all its parts and attributes are in place. The idea seed brings the subject, the structure and the materials into view for me. Puzzle solved, my work is before me.
I make book arts because I found the inventive structures of books appealing and surprising as a voice by themselves. I like the challenge of combining several structures into one book and the idea that they had to work as a folding object. I see the books as sculptural objects that may or may not incorporate text.