Fleeting: The Care in Learning to Slow Down
Shannon Ferguson
MFA Thesis Exhibition
March 16-25th, 2026
Ewing Gallery - University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Exhibition Statement: You might be entering this exhibition saying “Damn, this girl really loves her dog.” You’d be completely right, but there are, in fact, more important reasons as to why I am depicting my 3-year-old whippet, Velvet in this work.
She is a stand-in for myself in this work. She embodies both frustration and fulfillment in her endless search for ease. I document her daily rituals, burrowing, circling, adjusting, to capture the comedy and tragedy of her struggle for comfort. These repeated acts, full of both effort and futility, reveal the entanglement of care and time: comfort is never immediate, but always labored toward. There is reciprocal care between Velvet and I. Velvet’s care for me is mostly through emotional support. This care is inherent. I don’t think it is something that she is aware she is doing for me, and I care for her in the physical ways, feeding, walking, etc.
My work investigates the effort to visualize invisible illness and the ongoing search for relief from chronic pain. One in three Americans lives or has lived with chronic pain, yet its presence is often unseen and unacknowledged. Living with fibromyalgia, I experience comfort as something fleeting and elusive, always sought but rarely sustained. There are days where I can walk for miles unbothered, and then there are days where it just hurts to have hair. The dynamism of this illness makes it unpredictable, so my art making has to adapt to my physical state.
This body of work uses process as a way to force myself to slow down and think about what I am doing. I do this by using slow art-making processes including natural dyeing lithography, quilting, and frame-by-frame animation. The quilt becomes a metaphor for the body, and the short looping video acts as a metaphor for the anxiety feedback-loop between Velvet and I.
While your experience with this work may begin with “cute dog”, further investigation evolves into an understanding about the complexities of the relationship and reciprocal care between a woman with an invisible illness (fibromyalgia) and her dog.
She is a stand-in for myself in this work. She embodies both frustration and fulfillment in her endless search for ease. I document her daily rituals, burrowing, circling, adjusting, to capture the comedy and tragedy of her struggle for comfort. These repeated acts, full of both effort and futility, reveal the entanglement of care and time: comfort is never immediate, but always labored toward. There is reciprocal care between Velvet and I. Velvet’s care for me is mostly through emotional support. This care is inherent. I don’t think it is something that she is aware she is doing for me, and I care for her in the physical ways, feeding, walking, etc.
My work investigates the effort to visualize invisible illness and the ongoing search for relief from chronic pain. One in three Americans lives or has lived with chronic pain, yet its presence is often unseen and unacknowledged. Living with fibromyalgia, I experience comfort as something fleeting and elusive, always sought but rarely sustained. There are days where I can walk for miles unbothered, and then there are days where it just hurts to have hair. The dynamism of this illness makes it unpredictable, so my art making has to adapt to my physical state.
This body of work uses process as a way to force myself to slow down and think about what I am doing. I do this by using slow art-making processes including natural dyeing lithography, quilting, and frame-by-frame animation. The quilt becomes a metaphor for the body, and the short looping video acts as a metaphor for the anxiety feedback-loop between Velvet and I.
While your experience with this work may begin with “cute dog”, further investigation evolves into an understanding about the complexities of the relationship and reciprocal care between a woman with an invisible illness (fibromyalgia) and her dog.