Artist: Jackson Shaner

Exhibition Title: Creature Feature

Exhibtion Dates: April 27 - May 1, 2026

Reception and Gallery Talk: April 30, 2026

Artist Bio: 

Jackson Shaner (b. 1999) is a ceramic artist whose figurative sculptures capture energy, emotion, and storytelling. He is most widely known for his vessels that transform clay into fabric, with trapped figures pushing their way out. Shaner’s work blends technical craft with personal narrative, often drawing from queer trauma, dark aesthetics, and visions of the otherworldly.  

Shaner attended Furman University for his bachelor’s degree in Studio Art. There, he completed a teaching fellowship and began pursuing his career as an artist and educator. He then completed an artist residency at the New Harmony Clay Project, and has assisted workshops at Penland and Arrowmont Schools of Craft.

Jackson Shaner has shown work across the United States. Recently, he showed work at the 2026 NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in Detroit Michigan.

He is currently working towards completing his MFA at the University of South Carolina. Shaner also does freelance work, and he teaches classes and workshops at clay studios whenever possible.

Artist Statement:

Growing up queer in the South, I have often felt stretched between two impulses: the need to protect myself, and the desire to exist authentically. Ideally, one can exist in safety and authenticity, but I have not always felt able to do both. For much of my life, I have relied on masking and mirroring as survival tactics. Over time, these habits can obscure the self, replacing authenticity with performance. To know you are different but deny yourself the truth can be deeply damaging. This project is an effort to acknowledge and reclaim that truth through making.

Working in clay allows me to explore vulnerable parts of myself in a tangible form. By sculpting expressive monsters, I translate the language of queerness, shame, and self-preservation into material form. In this way, my sculptures become both mirrors and masks, revealing and concealing at once.

Monster stories have long been vehicles for coded narratives about queerness, gender, and social deviance. Through the writings of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Laura Westengard, Noël Carroll, and Paul Santilli, I’ve come to understand how these myths serve as reflections of collective fear and fascination. In looking at queer-coded monster stories, and in looking at the current political demonization of queer and trans individuals, monsters can be useful creatures symbolizing general queer rejection and the cruel effects of social and institutional other-ing.