Technologies of Tenderness, Susan Shantz

In addition to reproducing examples of the artist’s work and providing further background information, we were asked to create a publication sympathetic to her work, providing insight into her thought processes and work practices.
Our main objective for the catalog was to allow exhibition visitors to take a piece of the show home with them, while remaining aesthetically and conceptually true to the artist’s work. Central themes behind the artist’s work, such as tenderness, nurturing, vulnerability, technology and medical intervention in the birth of a child, became catalysts for the catalog’s aesthetic. Conceptually and visually, a sterile, clinical structure was developed based on pharmaceutical packaging and medical ephemera.
The creation of an artist’s multiple in the form of a dust jacket was based on the idea of a child’s sticker book. This contained repositionable fleshy pink printed and die-cut vinyl shapes and letterforms, developed from the artist’s own imagery. The notion of children’s games, such as hide and seek and dot to dot, reoccur throughout the catalog. Binding techniques chosen to relate to medical stitches and typographic content information announce details of the catalog’s weight and assist in communicating the overall context of the exhibition.