Mary Shannon Will
Calgary artist Mary Shannon Will, known for her vibrant ceramic sculptures and abstract paintings, died of ALS on Oct. 20. She was 77.
Shannon Will was born in Sampson, New York, in 1944 and spent her childhood in Seattle and Madison, Wisconsin. She studied ceramics at the University of Iowa from 1964 to 1967 and at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque from 1970 to 1971. She moved to Calgary in 1971 with her husband, artist John Will.
She made art for more than 50 years. In the 1960s and early 1970s, she focused on functional pottery, but later morphed into brightly coloured ceramic sculptures that recalled sensuous biological organisms. Around 1980, her interest in systems, rules and chance guided her to use colour and pattern in a series of abstract ceramic sculptures precisely patterned with hundreds of tiny dots and dashes. She began to make prints, drawings and paintings in the mid-1980s.
An exhibition celebrating her career, Mary Shannon Will: People, Places and Things, is on view until Nov. 27 in the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.
A celebration of her life will be held Nov. 27 at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary.
Source: Obituary for Mary Shannon Will
