About Me

I’m a California-based voice & visual artist. I immerse myself in creative adventure by exploring multiple genres, styles, and forms in my writing and art. I also make short films. ❤️robots.
Alonna Shaw's Consumerism Series
When family values became processed slogans, we lost personal validation generating consumers instead of citizens. Consumin...

Alonna Shaw's Consumerism Series



When family values became processed slogans, we lost personal validation generating consumers instead of citizens. Consuming equals validation. A hopeless equation.

My evolving Consumerism Series consists of poems, images, video poetry, a workbook, an annotated workbook, and the ekphrastic poetry book We R What We 8.

What hole in society's emotional makeup creates empty calories?

In exploring consumerism, I question sheep manipulation within advertising, marketing, and movie-making. As a shy introvert who loves one-on-one discussions contemplating larger social commentary—I also wonder, is it valid for me to take this on?

My first sales pitch formed at the sidelines of a horse show between events when I was ten. I ran the poles and barrels on my pony Taffy. She was small and beautiful. I saw those hungry looks on the other kids’ faces, kids who didn’t have a pony, kids who didn’t ride. My pitch went something like "for a quarter, hop on behind me, hang on, and you'll know what it feels like to gallop fast." The kids wanted to feel what I was selling. It never occurred to the ten-year-old me to ask their parents. I just wanted the quarter. In my late teens and early twenties as a model, the point to that seemingly superficial job was to compel consumers to consume. It taught me what, why, and how we place things as a way to control what is noticed. I learned to read the labels and between the lines.

I don’t trust face value.

If the mind actively notices the out of balance and the beautiful, what about the faint trace of broken brush on a trail or do we only call attention to those paths worn deep by demand? Those subtle indicators matter. They foreshadow who we will become as a society. The small and large bring to our attention a foundation that will alter our brain's “hard drive”—what we do with it, that is our voice.

We choose to own our consumption. My show, my store, my "brand." As consumerism marches forward, our individuality sits in a recycling bin. Hopes and dreams come prepackaged via marketed greed. Please find enclosed commercial promises among subtle life fragments.

The Pieces

Poetry Book: We R What We 8 or buy here
Short Film: experimental environmental Dropped From The Sky

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