# Sketchy Shona > Sketchy Shona is the professional artist name of Shona Neary, an artist based between Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia. They work remotely and travel for projects. The archive follows paintings, objects, tattoos, installations, public work and artist-led cultural projects. > > Optional reference index for automated discovery. It does not guarantee search rankings, citations or AI recommendations; the linked public pages and verified sources are authoritative. ## Identity - Canonical name: Sketchy Shona - Legal and professional name: Shona Neary - Former names: Shona.Designs, Shona Designs - Bases: Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia - Work: remote and travel projects internationally - Studio and artist-run project space: THE FLOOR - THE FLOOR is also an artist-owned cultural venture and property-tech prototype in Berlin - Founded by the artist: Countercult, a fintech and culture-tech startup building cultural and economic infrastructure, and Countercult Studios - Berlin work: public walls, exhibitions, events and THE FLOOR - Residency work: host and coordinator at Experiment Residency in Da Nang, Späti Residency by Experiment in Berlin, and the ongoing residency at THE FLOOR in Berlin - New York work: selected projects and collaborations alongside the practice between New York, Berlin and Philadelphia ## Residency hosting and coordination Sketchy Shona is an artist, curator, residency host and coordinator. - Experiment Residency, Da Nang, Vietnam: artist, co-host and coordinator - Späti Residency by Experiment, Berlin: host, coordinator and curator - THE FLOOR, Berlin: ongoing artist residency hosted by Sketchy Shona - [Journal: hosting and coordinating artist residencies](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/artist-residency-host-coordinator/): first-person account and contact route for residency hosting and coordination enquiries - [Da Nang residency archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/da-nang-residency/): murals, shared walls, flash drawings and process work - [Bushwick mural](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/bushwick-mural/): Carolina portrait for Hispanic Pride Month in Brooklyn, New York - [Da Nang free wall](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/da-nang-free-wall/): large-scale mural made for a small street-art business in Vietnam, distinct from the residency - [THE FLOOR](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor/): Berlin home, studio, project room and ongoing residency ## Work and exhibition distinctions - Half Life is a self-portrait painting shown within the DA SWAMP exhibition. It is not the exhibition title. - Life in Progress is the title of the central painting and the solo exhibition in which it appeared. - Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies is an in-progress chapter of drawings and sculpture, not a completed collection or work about depression. - DA SWAMP is the title of the 48 Stunden Neukölln exhibition at THE FLOOR. ## Main pages - [Home](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/): Overview of the artist, archive and studio - [Shona Neary professional portfolio](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/): Creative direction, brand architecture, product strategy, cultural research and cross-border growth - [Archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/portfolio/): Original works, installations, murals, objects and public projects - [Teufelsberg murals](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/teufelsberg/): Public art archive covering 2022, 2024 and 2025 - [Berlin Street Art](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin-street-art/): Artist-led paste-up event in Berlin by Sketchy Shona, photographed by Nash from the THE FLOOR context - [Private experiences with Sketchy Shona](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/private-experiences/): A private Berlin experience arranged by request around confirmed places and a route shaped to the group's brief - [Private Berlin Experience with Sketchy Shona](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin-street-art-tour/): A private day by request; routes and stops depend on the brief and what can be arranged - [Exhibitions](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/exhibitions/): Solo shows, temporary exhibitions and public art - [Shop](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store/): Available original works from the studio archive - [Commissions](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission/): Fine art, murals and installations, fashion and objects, tattoos, and commissions involving travel - [Press images and credits](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/press/): Reduced-size editorial images with captions and links to the relevant source pages - [Objects and extensions](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/short-form/): Drawings carried into clothing, objects, murals, tattoos, street interventions and live spatial work - [Whole Festival Beach Stage](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/whole-festival/): 2026 case study of Sketchy Shona painting approximately 40% of the stage, hired by creative director Eva Garland - [About](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/about/): Biography, exhibitions, artist residency hosting and coordination, and selected clients - [Journal](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/): First-person writing and studio field notes - [Contact](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/contact/): Studio enquiries - [Berlin](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin/): Berlin artist archive, public work, exhibitions and THE FLOOR - [NYC / New York](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/new-york/): NYC artist archive, fashion and collaborations - [THE FLOOR](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor/): Berlin studio, residency and occasional salon nights ## Place and practice indexes - [Berlin culture](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin-culture/): Sketchy Shona's Berlin record across murals, street art, exhibitions, live work, independent rooms, and THE FLOOR - [New York culture](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/new-york-culture/): New York art, fashion, creative work, and the wider history behind the practice - [Rural culture](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/rural-culture/): Galicia, Anceu, Rural Hackers, murals, residencies, and place-based work - [Fine art](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/fine-art/): original paintings, drawings, objects, sculpture, installations, and mixed-media chapters The goals of the Sketchy Shona practice are to build an artist-owned cultural world, sell serious original work, create a durable archive, develop THE FLOOR as a physical room, make selective collaborations without flattening the practice into services, and connect fine art to public space, fashion, technology, and place. ## Complete Journal index ### Queer places I recommend for creatives Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/queer-places-for-creatives/ Published: 2026-10-12 Summary: My growing guide to queer bars, clubs, parties, festivals and collectives across Berlin, New York, Dublin, Da Nang and Cape Town. Topics: Sketchy Shona, queer artist, LGBTQ+ artist, queer places for creatives, Berlin queer nightlife, New York queer bars, Dublin LGBTQ+ nightlife, Da Nang LGBTQ+, Cape Town queer culture, queer collectives, queer festivals Article text: A personal list, not a directory I am a queer artist, and these are places, parties, festivals and collectives I recommend to queer creatives. The list is personal and still growing. Some names are permanent venues; others are events that move between spaces. Check each current programme, address, opening hours and access information before making plans. Berlin Bars and places: Silver Future, Möbel Olfe, Tenns Bar, KitKatClub, OXI, Monster Ronson's Ichiban Karaoke and Crack Bellmer. Parties and collectives: Hoe__mies, Pornceptual, Cuddles, Gegen, tracey and LP Service, a Berlin event series. WHOLE Festival is a festival rather than a fixed venue. Check its current location and dates before travelling. New York House of Yes and Mood Ring in Brooklyn, Basement in New York City, and Cubbyhole in Manhattan. My New York guide also includes 3 Dollar Bill, Stonewall Inn and Henrietta Hudson. Dublin Street 66 is a queer bar I recommend in Dublin. The Thomas House, Lucky's and The George are also on my Dublin list. Da Nang Q Bar is one of the places I recommend in Da Nang. Cape Town The Duchess is on my Cape Town list. Related sources: - [Read my New York guide](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/new-york-culture) - [Read my Berlin guide](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin-culture) ### My Neukölln: an artist's guide to the work, rooms and people Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/my-neukoelln-guide-sketchy-shona/ Published: 2026-10-04 Summary: I know Neukölln through my Berlin street-art tour and hands-on workshop, exhibitions, local collaborations, two place-specific flash sheets and THE FLOOR residency. Topics: Sketchy Shona, Neukölln, Berlin, artist guide, place guide, Berlin art tour, Berlin street art tour, Berlin graffiti tour, Neukölln art tour, Berlin street art workshop, hands-on street art workshop, working Berlin artist, artist workshops, 48 Stunden Neukölln, THE FLOOR residency, DA SWAMP, Berlin tattoo flash, local business collaborations Article text: A neighbourhood I know by making I love Neukölln because my relationship with it comes from the work I make and the people I meet here. I know the neighbourhood through my Berlin street-art tour and hands-on workshop, exhibitions, collaborations with businesses, two place-specific flash sheets and THE FLOOR, the artist-run residency I founded. This is not a list of current openings or an attempt to explain the whole district. It is a guide through the parts of Neukölln that have become part of my working life. I do not want to use the neighbourhood as a backdrop or a style. The place changes what I notice, what I make and how people encounter it. That relationship is more useful to me than a checklist of places to photograph. Neukölln in the flash drawings My Berlin flash sheet and the DA SWAMP flash sheet are both rooted specifically in Neukölln. The Berlin sheet brings together a doorway, a bicycle, bottles, keys, a speaker, lighters and smaller street details that kept pulling my eye. I drew them in black ink for tattoos, but the sheet began as a way of looking closely at a particular place, not at an abstract idea of Berlin. The DA SWAMP sheet belongs to another part of that relationship. It sits alongside the exhibition I made for 48 Stunden Neukölln, with the claimed designs marked by red crosses. The marks and objects on the page carry something of the neighbourhood into a form that can travel with another person. Exhibitions and rooms that stay with me DA SWAMP brought drawings, flash tattoos, objects, bodies and a sculptural installation into THE FLOOR during 48 Stunden Neukölln. I wanted the work to meet the room and the people moving through it, rather than appear as a row of separate objects. The space, its light and the activity around it changed how the work could be experienced. THE FLOOR is my home, studio and project room in Neukölln, as well as an artist-run residency I founded. Artists can live and work there with time to develop an idea in Berlin. It is a private residence and studio, not a public venue with drop-in hours, so visits are arranged around the people living and working there. Tours, workshops and working with businesses My tours and workshops let me share parts of Neukölln through the work I have made, the people I know and the places I can genuinely arrange to visit. A private Berlin day can begin in Neukölln, move through Schillerkiez and across Tempelhofer Feld, then change around the group's questions. That is one possible route, not a fixed itinerary or a promise of access to private rooms. Collaborating with businesses is another way I stay in conversation with the neighbourhood. I want the work to respond to the actual place, its people and what happens there, rather than borrow a local look and leave. At Klunkerkranich, Sketchy Sessions brought live drawing alongside jazz and DJs. Drawing became part of a night people were already sharing, and the event continued to feed the sketches after it ended. A guide built from returning For me, loving Neukölln means continuing to work with it and the people who make it a place to live, gather and create. The flash sheets, exhibitions, tours, workshops, business collaborations and THE FLOOR are different parts of that relationship. They let me share the neighbourhood without pretending that one image or one route can stand for all of it. If you want to see this part of Berlin through my work, begin with the private art day, DA SWAMP, the Berlin flash sheets or THE FLOOR residency. Please arrange any visit to THE FLOOR in advance; it is a home and working studio as well as a residency. Related sources: - [Ask me about a private Berlin art day](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin-street-art-tour) - [Read the DA SWAMP exhibition record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/da-swamp-48-stunden-neukoelln) - [See THE FLOOR residency](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor) - [Browse the Berlin and DA SWAMP flash sheets](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/ink) - [Read about Sketchy Sessions at Klunkerkranich](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-work-changes-shape-klunkerkranich) ### Sketchy sketches across Berlin, New York, Galicia and Vietnam Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/sketchy-sketches-across-berlin-new-york-galicia-vietnam/ Published: 2026-10-02 Summary: So far I have done this work in Berlin, New York, Galicia in Spain and Vietnam. The sketches move between pages and public places, and I am excited to make more. Topics: Sketchy Shona, Sketchy sketches, working sketches, Berlin, New York, Galicia, Spain, Vietnam, tattoos, murals, paste-ups, street art Article text: Sketches made in different places So far I have done this work in Berlin, New York, Galicia in Spain and Vietnam. I am excited to do more. The sketches are not a set of pictures I carry from place to place unchanged. Each project has its own materials, room, people or street to pay attention to. I want to keep the sketches open long enough to see what a mark can become. One can move onto skin, a paste-up or a wall. Another may belong in a painting, an object or a room. The next form depends on the work and where it will live. Berlin and New York In Berlin, the sketches from Sketchy Sessions at Klunkerkranich came out of live drawing alongside jazz and DJs from the Countercult network. I was drawing from the city, music, nature and what was around me. I kept working on the sketches after the event. They did not belong to one night or to tattoos alone. In Bushwick, New York, the digital sketch for my mural showed Carolina with her skateboard before I painted it on the wall. The sketch helped me work through the image before it met that particular surface and the people moving past it. Galicia and Vietnam In Anceu, Galicia, the work moved through sketches, an interior mural and an installation. I worked with found doors and local references such as Tambor, the village dog. I did not want to take an image made for somewhere else and set it down unchanged. In Da Nang, Vietnam, flash sketches, murals and shared walls sat within the same residency. The marks could move between the page and the places where people gathered, changing scale and material along the way. The archive keeps those records together. Keeping the sketches in motion I call these Sketchy sketches because they remain in motion. Some become tattoos; others move into paste-ups, murals, paintings, objects or fashion. They are not all one collection or product, and I do not need to decide their final use before I make them. I am excited to continue this work in more places. I want the next sketches to come from what is actually there, not from an idea of what a city is supposed to look like before I arrive. Related sources: - [Browse Sketchy sketches](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/sketches) - [See the Klunkerkranich sketch archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-work-changes-shape-klunkerkranich) - [Open the Bushwick mural record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/bushwick-mural) - [Open the Anceu archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/rural-hackers-anceu) - [Open the Da Nang residency archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/da-nang-residency) ### Hosting and coordinating artist residencies in Berlin and beyond Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/artist-residency-host-coordinator/ Published: 2026-09-28 Summary: I have hosted and coordinated artist residencies in Da Nang and Berlin, and continue the work at THE FLOOR in Berlin. Read about my experience and contact me. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist residency, residency host, residency coordinator, Berlin, Da Nang, Experiment Residency, Späti Residency, THE FLOOR Article text: Three residency contexts At Experiment Residency in Da Nang, Vietnam, I took part as an artist and co-hosted the residency. I also coordinated it. I keep the project together in the archive through its mural work, shared walls and flash drawings. In Berlin, I hosted and coordinated Späti Residency by Experiment, where I also worked as curator. These roles put me close to a residency from its organisation to the work made through it. At THE FLOOR, I continue to host artists in the Berlin home, studio and project room I founded. The residency is residential and artist-run. Its current application, terms and stay information are on the THE FLOOR page. Why the host matters My work has moved between being the person who arrives to make work and the person who holds a space or programme for others. They are different responsibilities, but they inform one another. I know from the artist's side that a residency is not valuable simply because it takes place in another city. Its conditions matter: where the work can happen, how a resident enters a place, what the hosts have promised and whether the artist has enough freedom to follow the work. Planning a residency At THE FLOOR, I have an ongoing residency programme in Berlin. Elsewhere, I can be approached about hosting or coordinating a residency with an organisation, cultural space or local partner. Every context is different; I would first want to understand who is involved, what the place needs and what the residency is expected to make possible. If you are looking for an artist residency host or coordinator, contact me with the location, dates, intended artists and what you need me to hold. I am based between Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia and travel for projects. We can talk about fit, responsibilities and scope before treating it as a defined programme. Start with the records The Da Nang archive holds the residency's murals, shared walls and drawings together. The THE FLOOR page has the current application information, and the Journal includes a resident's account of a month in the Berlin space. Related sources: - [Open the Da Nang residency archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/da-nang-residency) - [Read the THE FLOOR residency open call](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-open-call-berlin-artist-residency-2026) - [Read a resident's THE FLOOR journal](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/pink-spy-the-floor-art-residency) - [Contact me about hosting a residency](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/about#contact) ### Yes, the Tattoos Are Back: Berlin Flash Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/berlin-flash-the-tattoos-are-back/ Published: 2026-09-28 Summary: I released a Berlin flash sheet drawn specifically from Neukölln. The black-ink designs are open to enquiry, alongside selected unmarked designs from earlier sheets. Topics: Sketchy Shona, Berlin tattoo flash, Berlin tattoo artist, Neukölln, black-ink drawing, flash tattoo, artist flash, tattoo drawings Article text: The new Berlin sheet I have just released a new flash sheet for Berlin, drawn specifically from Neukölln. It brings together a doorway, a bicycle, bottles, keys, a speaker, lighters and the smaller street details that keep pulling my eye. I wrote BERLIN across the page because these drawings come from a specific place, not from an abstract idea of a city. At the foot of the sheet I wrote, “yes the tattoos are back.” It is a simple announcement, and it feels right for returning to tattooing through a set of drawings that can be looked at slowly and chosen from. A drawing moves onto skin Each drawing begins as its own image, but a tattoo becomes part of a body and the life carried by it. That changes the drawing. I make the image, then another person carries it in a way I have to take seriously. I do not separate flash from the rest of my practice. It stays connected to drawing, painting, objects and public work, while being made specifically for skin. Earlier sheets are open too The new Berlin sheet is the main release. Selected unmarked designs from earlier DA SWAMP, Galicia, symbols and figures, dogs and objects, and fish sheets are open to enquiry as well. Designs already marked with a red cross have been claimed. I will confirm availability before a session is arranged. Start with the image If one of the drawings stays with you, open the Ink page and tell me which sheet or image you have in mind. Placement, approximate size and timing can help, but none of the form fields is required. A short note or question is enough to start the conversation. Related sources: - [See the Neukölln-specific Berlin flash sheet](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/ink#berlin-flash) - [Browse earlier flash sheets](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/ink#earlier-flash) - [Start a tattoo enquiry](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/ink#book) ### What stays human when life is filtered through systems Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/what-stays-human-when-life-is-filtered-through-systems/ Published: 2026-09-25 Summary: I make familiar rooms strange and follow images from paper to skin, wall, object and room because I want to know what remains human when systems mediate life. Topics: Sketchy Shona, art theory, artist-owned world, painting, drawing, tattoo, installation, technology, THE FLOOR Article text: The question under the work I am building an artist-owned world through paintings, drawings, objects, tattoos, installations, public work and THE FLOOR. I do not mean that all these forms should look the same or fit under one label. Each does something different to an image and to the people who meet it. The question that keeps them in relation is what remains human when life is filtered through machines and systems that classify, optimize and mediate what we see. I use digital tools and build systems too, so I do not see technology and nature as opposing teams. What concerns me is the point when what can be measured, named, automated or sold becomes the only version of life that counts. A body is not a dataset, a room is not neutral space, and a person is not only a role inside a system. The work is one way I test where those reductions break down. A familiar room can stop being familiar I keep returning to a familiar room or object becoming strange. The strangeness is not decoration or a puzzle with one hidden answer. It interrupts the routine way we use and read a thing. When an object or corner no longer behaves as expected, attention returns to the body, the room's history and whatever its ordinary function kept out of view. That is why setting matters. An installation is not a painting enlarged, and a room is not a background. Light, distance, surface, weight, access and the presence of other people change what an image can mean. The viewer meets those decisions in space, not only as an idea described on a label. An image changes as it travels A sketch is a fast record of looking. When a mark becomes paint, it gathers a different weight. On skin, a tattoo becomes an enduring extension of an image, carried through another person's life. On a wall it meets a place and its public, while an object can be handled and live beside someone. At THE FLOOR the work can meet a room in use and the people inside it. Each change alters the relationship, not just the format. I am not trying to make paintings, tattoos and rooms interchangeable. Their differences matter. The artist-owned world forms through the connections and the limits between them. A mural, a tattoo and a painting are different kinds of encounters, with different materials, audiences and durations. The opposites need to stay in contact I am interested in physical matter and spirit, physics and spirituality, nature and technology, restraint and excess. I move between self-command and appetite, simple living and extreme experience. I do not use these pairs to choose a winner or make them into a balanced formula. They keep the work from closing around one explanation. A metal or porous surface can carry marks of contact, wear and time while suggesting something that cannot be reduced to a function. A body can look vulnerable or strange without becoming a case study. Nature can appear inside an environment shaped by machines. I want these contradictions to stay present rather than turn into a message that makes life feel settled. Disorder is part of how I work The making does not move in a straight line. I work through fragments, false starts, wandering, changes of direction and stretches where there is no clear finish. That is not proof that confusion is the subject, and I do not treat distress as a creative resource. It is a way of staying available to what the material, place and experience have not made clear yet. The work still depends on choices, revision and craft. Why build a world around the work I am not trying to produce one image that explains me. I am building a world in which people can encounter the work across different parts of life: as an image, something carried on skin, something handled, a room or a public encounter. THE FLOOR gives the practice a real place for that exchange. I keep building it because I do not want the work reduced to one image, one medium, one system or one answer. I want the paintings, drawings, tattoos, objects, rooms and public encounters to give people different ways to meet the same unresolved question: what is left out when the systems we live through become the only systems we trust? Related sources: - [Read Shona Neary's essay on AI and artistic authorship](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/journal/the-artist-is-not-the-tool/) ### A Salon Night at The Floor with Berlin Pulse and Sketchy Shona Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-salon-night-berlin-pulse/ Published: 2026-09-23 Summary: A new collaboration involving Berlin Pulse, Sketchy Shona, THE FLOOR and Countercult, with public event details to follow when confirmed. Topics: THE FLOOR, Berlin Pulse, Salon Night, Berlin, Sketchy Shona, Countercult Article text: The room comes first THE FLOOR is my Berlin studio, residency and project room. It is a real room with a residential context, a place where artists can live, work and spend enough time around an idea for it to become specific. The Salon Night collaboration with Berlin Pulse starts from that same understanding of place. It is not a generic event announcement separated from the life of the room. It is a relationship between people, local culture and a space with its own history. A connected collaboration The announced collaboration involves Berlin Pulse, Sketchy Shona, THE FLOOR and Countercult. The names stay distinct. THE FLOOR is the room and residency. Sketchy Shona is my artist practice. Countercult is the cultural infrastructure I founded for public cultural discovery, local intelligence and paid work. The connection is the project and the people around it. Berlin Pulse and Sketchy Shona are named as hosts of the Salon Night collaboration, with the wider record carried across the connected sites. Details when they are confirmed The collaboration has been announced, but the public date, time, venue, ticket or RSVP route are not confirmed in the materials currently available. I am leaving those details out rather than making the page sound more finished than the event is. The connected records will be updated when the practical information is ready to publish. Until then, this Journal entry is a record of the collaboration and the room it is developing from. The resident open call remains its own offer THE FLOOR is also accepting applications for artist stays beginning in November 2026. That open call is for artists who want concentrated time for their own practice inside a small, artist-run residential and creative environment in Neukölln. The residency and the Salon Night are related because they share a room and a wider cultural practice. They are not the same offer. The residency has its own application route, terms and expectations. Related sources: - [Read the Countercult collaboration record](https://countercult.network/journal/the-floor-salon-night-berlin-pulse/) - [Open the Countercult Salon Night page](https://countercult.network/events/berlin-salon-night) - [Read the THE FLOOR open call](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-open-call-berlin-artist-residency-2026) - [Visit THE FLOOR](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor) ### Sketchy Shona: an artist, an archive and the work around it Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/sketchy-shona-artist-original-art-archive/ Published: 2026-09-15 Summary: I am Shona Neary, known as Sketchy Shona, working across Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia in painting, objects, murals, tattoos, installations and cultural projects. Topics: Sketchy Shona, Shona Neary, original art, original paintings, Berlin artist, New York artist, Philadelphia artist, artist studio, THE FLOOR Article text: The work has more than one surface I am Shona Neary, working publicly as Sketchy Shona. I move between Berlin and New York, making paintings, drawings, objects, murals, tattoos, installations and the rooms that hold them. These are not separate services to me. They are different places where the same marks can gather and change. A drawing can become a painting. A painting can become an object or a room. A mark can travel onto skin, furniture, a wall or a public gathering. I follow that movement because it shows how a body of work grows from one decision into another. An archive gives the marks somewhere to go The paintings hold bodies, faces, hands, objects, pressure and atmosphere. The projects carry those concerns into a home, a street, a studio, a residency, a gallery or a room that needs a stronger centre. My archive keeps those relationships visible. It lets someone begin with an original painting, sculpture, mural, Ink work or exhibition record, then see how one mark has continued through different materials and situations. A mark becomes a body of work, and the body of work becomes an archive I can keep building. Original work for a particular room The shop holds a changing selection of original artwork and available work. Each painting or study has its own history, surface and scale. Some belong to earlier parts of the practice, while others sit closer to the chapters I am developing now. To collect an original work is to give that history a new room in which to continue. The listing includes the available details, and I can answer practical questions about dimensions, condition, framing, collection and insured shipping before a purchase. Commissions that leave something behind I take on selected commissions when there is a real reason for the work to exist. That can mean a painting for a home, a mural for a public place, a group of works for a new office, or a visual environment for a brand, hotel, restaurant or cultural project. I begin with the place, the people, the scale, the atmosphere and the problem the work needs to answer, rather than copying a reference image. The result might be a painting, object, mural, installation or connected visual system. It should remain recognisably mine while giving its new context an identity it can keep. The Floor is part of the archive The Floor is my Berlin home, studio and residency room. It is a physical place to test ideas, host people and let work be seen before it has settled into a final category. The residency programme begins in November 2026. It belongs to the wider practice of paintings and projects, but has its own purpose: a room where artists can arrive, work, exchange and develop something with enough time around it. Follow the work through its own records The archive is easier to understand when each project keeps its own place. Klunkerkranich is a Berlin club where I have worked through drawing, painting and live cultural experience. Teufelsberg carries a Berlin Späti rave into a large public wall. Life in Progress follows painting into the body and the room, while my residency and mural records hold the people, places and conditions around the work. I keep these projects separate because a painting, a mural, a tattoo, a residency and a night in a club do different things. Together they show how one practice moves between an original work, a public place and the people who gather there. The Journal also holds my notes on place-specific commissions, the city guides I have made through working in Berlin, and the development of THE FLOOR. If you are looking for an original, a commission or a collaboration with the practice, the links below lead to the relevant part of the archive. I keep client work within the limits of the permissions around it, and give each public project its own record. Building the institution in public I share longer studio notes, release dates, available originals and project records through the studio list. The public Journal gives the archive room to hold more than one image or announcement. The website, the Journal, the original works and The Floor are all part of the institution I am building. If you are looking for a work, considering a commission or following the development of The Floor, begin with the relevant part of the site and join the list. I want the people paying attention to be able to follow the work over time. Related sources: - [Browse original artwork and available work](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store) - [Enter the Sketchy Shona art archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/portfolio) - [Ask about a commission](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Visit The Floor in Berlin](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor) - [Join the studio list](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/connect) - [Klunkerkranich: drawing, painting and cultural experience](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-work-changes-shape-klunkerkranich) - [Teufelsberg: from Späti rave to wall](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/teufelsberg-from-spati-rave-to-wall) - [Life in Progress: painting, skin and the room](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/life-in-progress-painting-skin-and-the-room-between-them) - [The Floor and Berlin Pulse collaboration record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-salon-night-berlin-pulse) - [Book a Sketchy Shona Berlin experience](https://www.getyourguide.com/sketchy-shona-s726453/) ### A commission translates a place. It does not copy it. Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/commissioning-the-landscape-without-copying-it/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: Two pastel landscapes for collectors in Australia, made from the feeling of a place rather than copied from a photograph. Topics: commissioned art, commission, pastel landscape, painting, private collectors, Australia, Sketchy Shona Article text: The brief A pair of collectors in Australia asked me to make two pastel landscapes for their home, based on a place they loved. The material Their photographs were blurry. We made an inspiration page together, and I followed the colours, open sky and lakes instead of copying the photos. Framed canvas was impractical to ship, so we chose soft chalk pastel on paper, with framing arranged in Australia. In their home They picked up the finished pieces from my studio in Berlin. Later, they sent me photographs of both works installed at home in Australia. The commission includes that last part of the journey, too. Related sources: - [See commissions and past work](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Read the original studio dispatch](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-an-artist-a-child-of-the-internet) - [Contact the studio](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/contact) ### Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies: a chapter taking shape Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/broken-teeth-rotten-bodies-sculpture-chapter/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: Drawings and mixed-media sculptures begun in Berlin in January 2026, held in the archive as an in-progress chapter rather than a finished collection. Topics: Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies, Berlin, sculpture, mixed media, drawing, artist process, Sketchy Shona Article text: A chapter begins in Berlin Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies began in Berlin in January 2026. I do not know yet whether it should be called a finished collection. I do know that this was when I began to understand that groups of related works could develop as sustained chapters. The name comes from the recurring image at the centre: broken, bloody teeth, bodies that fragment, and forms carrying damage and persistence at once. The sculptures were part of The Floor launch in January 2026, in a room made for work while it is still becoming precise. What the body carries For years I have had repeating, never-ending visions, mostly as dreams, of broken, bloody teeth falling from my head and coming all at once into my hands. In reality, I have also struggled with an autoimmune disease. At times it affects my body and mind and can make me feel out of control, even on a cellular and DNA level. We are fragile, but the body takes on our score. Stress, death, health and the attempt to regain control through making all entered this work. The sculptures are not an illustration of those experiences. They are where those pressures became physical. Drawings acquire weight The work started as drawings and expanded into small mixed-media sculptures. Moving from paper into objects allowed the forms to take on weight, surface and a physical presence that the drawing could only suggest. The white and black objects are related without being identical. Their differences in scale, posture and surface matter as much as their repetition. A group can behave like a body while still containing individual damage and variation. Keeping the collection question open This is the first point where the collection idea has become structurally useful to me. A collection is not a marketing label placed on finished objects after the fact. It can give one visual question enough time to develop across drawing and object. For now, the archive holds Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies as an in-progress chapter. It has a name, a beginning, recurring forms and a movement between materials. Whether it becomes the first formally confirmed collection remains a studio decision. Related sources: - [View the Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/broken-teeth-rotten-bodies) - [Visit THE FLOOR](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor) ### When I Could Feel Only My Body Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/when-i-could-feel-only-my-body/ Published: 2026-09-25 Summary: I make emotional states physical through painting, drawing and objects. In a numb period, bodily sensation and intense colour gave me something to work with, and the images have brought people together around what can be hard to say. Topics: Sketchy Shona, mental states, body, painting, drawing, community, Life in Progress, Half Life Article text: When feeling goes quiet Depression moves in waves for me. The death of someone close to me triggered a depressive episode of my own. During a numb period, I could feel little beyond the physical sensations of my body. I never decided to become an artist. Making is part of how my mind works, as depression is. Neither is something I chose. When I start creating again as I come out of a depressive slump, it can be a sign that feeling and balance are returning for me. It does not mean the depression is gone, and I do not offer it as a cure for anyone else. Give the feeling a body I draw and create emotional states through the ways they feel in the body: a body on fire, a heavy head, rotten teeth. These are physical forms for feelings that can be difficult to name, not diagnoses. Sometimes there is no vocabulary for a state. A drawing, painting or object can still hold its heat, weight, pressure or distortion without pretending it explains everything. I paint my figures from the bones outward, adding layer by layer. The body takes shape through that slow construction. The storm before the process The central painting and the exhibition share the title Life in Progress. I made the painting during a numb period when I could feel little beyond the physical sensations of my own body. I think of it as the storm before the process: a storm of feeling and life, held in numbness and close to breaking. Its colours are intense rather than muted or grey. Somehow, that made the painting feel more alive. I do not have a neater explanation for the pressure in it. Half Life I titled this self-portrait Half Life. I brought physics and spirituality together in it. While I was processing depression, existentialism gave me something to hold onto and helped me keep going. The painting was shown in the DA SWAMP exhibition at THE FLOOR in Berlin. DA SWAMP is the exhibition title, not the painting’s name. What the work does between us My work has created a community of people who have struggled with depression. When words are missing, we can recognise something of ourselves in an image and find a way to be together. It can give sense to an experience that is difficult to say. I do not claim that this is treatment or that one image speaks for everyone. Related sources: - [Life in Progress exhibition archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/life-in-progress) - [Half Life in the DA SWAMP exhibition](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/da-swamp#half-life) - [Broken Teeth & Rotten Bodies archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/broken-teeth-rotten-bodies) ### Life in Progress: a painting moves through skin and space Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/life-in-progress-painting-skin-and-the-room-between-them/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: My first solo exhibition brought a central painting into live tattooing, related symbols, paste-ups and the changing room around them. Topics: Life in Progress, Berlin, solo exhibition, painting, tattoo, paste-up, live art, Sketchy Shona Article text: My first solo exhibition Life in Progress was my first solo exhibition. Looking back, I can see the beginning of a structure that might become a collection: one central painting, related works, returning symbols and a live action that lets the work leave the wall. I am not calling it a collection by default. I am keeping the question open because this was the first time the practice operated as one connected system rather than a group of separate paintings. The painting at the centre The central painting and the exhibition share the title Life in Progress. I made it during a numb period when I could register little beyond the physical sensations of my own body. I think of it as the storm before the process: a storm of feeling and life, held in numbness and close to breaking. Its colours are intense rather than muted or grey. Somehow, that made the painting feel more alive. I paint my figures from the bones outward, adding layer by layer. In this painting, the body sits beneath a shifting field of cloud, colour and atmosphere. It became the point from which the other parts could move. The surrounding paintings and studies move through bodies, hands, faces, objects, interiors and fragments of visual memory. Some are quiet and observational. Others are direct, physical or difficult to place. Together they show a way of looking that is still changing. When the painting reaches skin At the centre of the exhibition was a live installation. I tattooed motifs from the paintings onto participants, bringing the marks into a temporary exchange. The tattoo was not an illustration added after the painting. It was another surface through which the same work could continue. The symbols also appeared in paste-ups and wall marks. A star-like form, small abstract shapes and hand-drawn lettering connected canvas to skin, the room and the city-facing side of the work. Repetition made the exhibition active rather than sealed. A room that remains in progress The exhibition held finished paintings, studies, notes, process images, people arriving, people being tattooed and traces gathered around the work. Showing those states together mattered. The room could hold what was complete and how other people entered it. Life in Progress is about perception and connection more than one personal narrative. It asks what happens when an image moves between canvas, skin and wall, and when the viewer becomes part of that movement. The archive keeps it as a possible first chapter in the wider practice. Whether it becomes the first named collection remains a studio decision. Related sources: - [View the Life in Progress archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/life-in-progress) ### Teufelsberg: a Berlin Späti rave reaches the wall Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/teufelsberg-from-spati-rave-to-wall/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: A large-scale painting made in about nine hours at Teufelsberg, carrying a real moment from a Berlin Späti rave onto a public wall. Topics: Teufelsberg, Berlin, mural, street art, large-scale painting, public work, Sketchy Shona Article text: A moment carried at speed I painted this in about nine hours from a real moment at one of our Berlin Späti raves. I would like to return with better equipment, but I had underestimated how high I could reach with a ladder. The ladder and a few cans of paint were the actual conditions of the work. The speed is part of its record. The wall holds the image, but it also holds how the image had to be made. Returning to Teufelsberg Teufelsberg is a former Cold War listening station turned open-air art site. I have returned across different years and wall conditions, so this painting belongs to an ongoing public record rather than a single isolated studio object. Scale changes the decisions. A figure has to hold from a distance, while smaller marks, lettering, stars and shifts of colour keep the wall active when someone comes close. A mural becomes a landmark A mural is not simply a painting made larger. It is made for a surface, a site and people who encounter it without entering a gallery. At Teufelsberg, the wall becomes part of how the image is remembered. The photographs keep the decisions visible even as the wall changes. This record sits beside the wider mural, street art and installation archive, connected to painting, drawing, tattooing and temporary rooms without being reduced to any one of them. Related sources: - [View the Teufelsberg archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/teufelsberg) ### GreenViet: a mural made with the wall in mind Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/greenviet-making-a-mural-in-vietnam/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: The GreenViet non-profit mural in Vietnam moved from drawings and studies into a wall of figures, plants, animals, water and colour. Topics: GreenViet, Vietnam, mural, non-profit, public work, painting, Sketchy Shona Article text: From drawing to public wall The record identifies this as a GreenViet non-profit mural in Vietnam. It moves between a drawing, a painted study and the larger wall, so the project is preserved as a process as well as a finished image. The wall brings together a figure, an animal, plants, water and open circular forms. The image is direct, while the surface stays worked. Brush marks, spray and changes of pressure remain visible in the finished record. The place enters the picture Public painting is shaped by the site around it: light, weather, access, the wall itself and the people who will live with the image. A mural is not a portable studio painting enlarged without adjustment. The process photographs show the physical scale and the work of reaching the surface. They also show the image developing through contact with its place. That contact is what can give a public wall an identity beyond a temporary piece of content. A specific public-work record GreenViet belongs in the public-work archive as a specific collaboration and place record. It can sit beside other murals and installations while retaining its own context. The value is not only an image for documentation. It is the beginning of a local landmark and a lasting physical asset for the place. ### Nam Jam: a shared wall in Vietnam Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/nam-jam-street-art-jam/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: A record of the Nam Jam street art jam in Vietnam, where figures, bikes, instruments and symbols gathered across one shared wall. Topics: Nam Jam, Vietnam, street art, shared wall, public work, Sketchy Shona Article text: A wall made through exchange The record identifies this as a street art jam with Nam Jam in Vietnam. Figures, bikes, hats, instruments, signs and symbols gather in one shared field instead of behaving like separate finished paintings. A shared wall depends on movement. People add, respond, adjust and leave room for another image to enter. The final surface keeps evidence of those decisions, which is part of what makes the work different from a solitary studio painting. Drawing at public scale Street art keeps the drawing hand visible. Lines can stay quick, characters can remain strange and colour can move around the structure instead of settling into one polished system. The Nam Jam record belongs beside commissioned walls, murals and installations because it documents another condition of making. Its value lies in the shared situation as well as the image, and in the way a public moment can become part of the archive. ### The Floor open call: live and work in Berlin from November 2026. Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-open-call-berlin-artist-residency-2026/ Published: 2026-09-13 Summary: A full guide to The Floor residency in Neukölln, including who it is for, how the stays work, what is included and how to apply through Countercult. Topics: The Floor, Berlin, artist residency, open call, Neukölln Article text: Applications are open The Floor is accepting applications for artist stays beginning in November 2026. It is an artist-run coliving flat, studio and project space in Neukölln, Berlin, run by Sketchy Shona and connected to Countercult. This open call is for artists from any discipline who want concentrated time for their own practice while living inside a shared creative environment. The Floor is intentionally small. It is not a hotel, a production company or a public events venue. It is a place to live, make work, exchange ideas and develop a relationship with Berlin without separating daily life from artistic practice. Who the residency is for The programme welcomes collaborative and experimental artists with realistic expectations of a short-term, artist-run coliving space. A resident might arrive with a defined body of work, a period of research, a new material they want to test or simply the need for sustained time in another city. The residency does not require every stay to end in an exhibition or a polished public outcome. The emphasis is on serious engagement with the work, respect for the shared home and openness to the people and cultural life around it. One artist can occupy the private room, or a couple or artist duo can share it. Because the flat is also a home, fit matters as much as a conventional application portfolio. Shortlisted applicants are invited to a video interview with Sketchy Shona before a place is confirmed. When and how long Applications are currently open for arrivals from November 2026. Winter and spring stays run for three months, giving residents a longer period in the city and enough time for work to develop beyond an initial visit. Summer and autumn stays are available month to month. This shorter structure is intended for artists whose practice, work commitments or travel conditions make a longer stay unrealistic. The room and the fees The resident space is a 22 square metre private bedroom with access to shared creative areas, a shared kitchen and bathroom, and a private garden. Accommodation, utilities, internet and mentorship or coaching sessions are included. The fee is EUR 750 per month for one artist. A couple or artist duo sharing the room pays EUR 900 per month. A refundable EUR 200 security deposit is required and may be reduced if there is damage. Art materials, personal insurance, visa support and personal costs are not included. The Floor is currently run by artists and does not have external residency funding. Applicants who need support are encouraged to seek grants, local arts funding or personal sponsorship before applying. Living and working together The Floor is primarily residential. Residents can use the shared creative areas for personal artistic practice, work alongside peers and take part in the conversations that naturally develop inside a shared home. Small private gatherings directly connected to a resident's practice may be possible when they are invitation-only, compatible with residential use and agreed in advance. Sketchy Shona also hosts occasional curated salon nights by invitation. Residents cannot use The Floor for public events, public exhibitions, commercial venue activity, rentals or subletting. Noise must remain reasonable, particularly after 10 PM, and everyone is expected to respect the shared areas, neighbours and local community. A residency connected to the city The Floor has participated in 48 Stunden Neukölln and has collaborated with Klunkerkranich, StickerApp and other creative and cultural partners. These relationships are part of the programme's history, but they are not promised commissions or automatic introductions for each resident. What the residency can offer is a base from which to encounter Berlin, continue a practice and meet people through the real pace of the room. Past residency records show work developing through exhibitions, studio visits, neighbourhood encounters, shared production and the informal relationships that make time in another city meaningful. Past residents and records The residency archive is not presented as a list of inflated outcomes. It records people working, living and finding their way through Berlin. The linked Instagram posts below are part of that public record. Pink Spy's first-person visual diary also remains in the Journal. It follows a month at The Floor through DA SWAMP, 48 Stunden Neukölln, a Späti exhibition, artist meetings and the everyday work involved in turning an idea into something that can be shared. How to apply Applications are managed through Countercult. Joining Countercult is free. Create an account or sign in, then choose The Floor from the destination screen and open the application form. The application asks for enough information to understand your practice, the timing you need and whether the shared residential structure is right for you. Shortlisted applicants complete a video interview with Sketchy Shona. A stay is only confirmed after that conversation and agreement on dates, fees and house expectations. The open call is live now for stays beginning November 2026. Related sources: - [Past residency record 01 on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DZFmdbhjRxB/) - [Past residency record 02 on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DUgdOnIjZmc/) - [Past residency record 03 on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dba5sQpDkik/) - [Pink Spy residency journal](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/pink-spy-the-floor-art-residency) ### Sculptural installation: a body inside a silver structure Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/human-cocoon-one-project-three-views/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: Human Cocoon began as a drawing and became an installation for a body, shown within DA SWAMP at The Floor in Berlin. Topics: sculptural installation, installation, drawing, light, body, archive, Sketchy Shona Article text: The first form was a drawing Human Cocoon began with a drawing of a body folded inside a porous silver form. The concept image records the first form of the idea, rather than a flash drawing or separate study. The finished structure gives that drawing weight and scale. Its openings decide what the body can see and what can see it. The form is not only a shell around a person. It changes the relation between the person, the room and the viewer. A body completes the image The photographs record the installation at the scale it was meant to occupy: a seated body inside a larger structure, with the room visible around it. The light catches the surface while the openings keep the outside world present. This is not an object documented in a neutral space. The body, the form, the light and the room are the work together. The photographic record gives the archive three connected views: the concept, the built structure and the person inside it. Sculptural installation within DA SWAMP Human Cocoon was an installation within DA SWAMP, the 48 Stunden Neukölln exhibition at The Floor in Berlin. The exhibition brought together my drawings, objects, tattoos and live work in one temporary room. The archive keeps the sequence intact: concept sketch, built form, photographic record and the people who entered it. That sequence matters to the wider practice because an image can become an object, an object can shape a room, and a room can hold an encounter. ### The Floor: a room for work before it is ready. Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-floor-a-room-with-edges/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: The Berlin studio and project room where paintings, installations, conversations and invitations can remain unfinished long enough to become precise. Topics: The Floor, studio, residency, Berlin Article text: Before the finished thing The Floor is a room for work to be made, shown, tested and shared before it becomes anything else. It sits close to the studio and close to the public. A project can arrive as a sketch, a conversation, a gathering, a residency or a temporary installation. Connected, not collapsed The Floor sits in conversation with Sketchy Shona and Countercult, but it is not a department of either. It has its own pace, programme and way of holding people together. The room is useful because it can stay unfinished for a while. That is where the next form usually starts. ### From Mark to Object Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/from-mark-to-object/ Published: 2026-09-10 Summary: I follow a drawing as it moves from paper into tattoos, murals, objects, installations and the wider Sketchy Shona archive. Topics: Sketchy Shona, drawing, objects, tattoo artist, installations, artist archive Article text: A mark is a beginning I do not treat a drawing as a closed image. A line can become a tattoo, a mural, a textile, an installation or an object with weight and edges. The question is what the mark needs when it meets a new surface. Skin asks for permanence, a wall asks for scale, and an object has to occupy space rather than only describe it. The surface changes the work Moving a mark into another material changes its pace and its responsibilities. A drawing that works on paper may need to open out across a public wall, hold together on a body, or become part of a room people move through. These are not separate service categories to me. They are connected ways of testing whether an image has enough life to keep moving. The archive keeps the movement visible The Sketchy Shona archive holds past work, exhibition documentation, studies and objects, not only pieces that are currently available to buy. A mark becomes a body of work through repetition and change. The archive is where those relationships remain visible as more paintings, forms and fragments are ready to enter it. ### Before the door opens. Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/notes-from-the-floor/ Published: 2026-09-09 Summary: How the private studio holds process, residency, visits and programme without turning the room into a public venue. Topics: The Floor, programme, visits Article text: A room that can change The Floor is not designed as a finished venue. It can be a working studio one day, a project room the next and a place for a small gathering after that. The programme follows the work and the people around it. Announcements belong here when they are real. ### Philly Cheesesteak, Norovirus, Queer Techno, and a Five-Foot Butt Plug Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-philly-cheese-steak-norovirus-queer/ Published: 2026-07-24 Summary: A personal return to America, Berlin festival work, DA SWAMP, THE FLOOR, and the unruly facts of making an artist life across continents. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Berlin artist, New York artist, THE FLOOR, DA SWAMP, installations Article text: America, with a cheesesteak in hand When I stepped off the plane into the United States, I was hit by the mailboxes, five-lane highways, yellow school buses, pickup trucks, fireflies, raccoons, aggressive air conditioning and enormous iced coffees. After moving away eight years ago, I was feral for the fried food and the cultural noise. Within half an hour I had eaten a Philly cheesesteak with lemon iced tea. My family has moved back to Philly, and we are planning a cookout with Sprite in the barbecue rub, karaoke, at least 50 cousins, a portable toilet and whoever arrives from around the block. We are also celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday. I have spent years criticising America from a distance, but homesickness reminded me what I love: the ability to make a celebration out of almost anything. The artist manifesto, still messy The whiplash is part of the point. I moved to Berlin to survive as an artist because the culture there offered forms of support I could not find at home, while the dependence on grants can leave artists without the independence of small business owners. Public and visual art has always spoken to me because artists have always helped a society process existence. I compare being an artist to being a monk. You do not choose it cleanly, and no sane person would accept the uncertainty unless something in them kept insisting. I am heading to New York and perhaps D.C. until the end of August to make art, see old and new friends and dance a little. DA SWAMP and the return of my work For years I drifted away from my own art and toward work I could invoice in order to survive. When my visa restrictions loosened, I could return to the work itself. DA SWAMP became that return, and also a first step into installation and tattooing as connected parts of the practice. At THE FLOOR, the residency space I run in Berlin, Latvian art students found me online, travelled by a 20-hour bus and became art residents. Sketchy Shona and Niamh Erin Cusack hosted a show there as part of 48 Stunden Neukölln. Hundreds of people came, sat in the human cocoon, fished in the frog pond and watched the swamp take shape. I even tattooed a frog. The festival build Eva Garland asked me to help create the Beach Stage for WHOLE Festival. We packed tools and materials into a van and spent weeks preparing the installation, including a five-foot-tall butt plug. During the build, a norovirus outbreak left half the crew vomiting and quarantined. By the festival, the virus had passed and I danced anyway among thousands of gay men. The stage work is part of the same movement from mark to object and room. It leaves behind a physical environment rather than only an image on a screen. THE FLOOR and the next chapter THE FLOOR’s bookings reopened, with a last-minute September availability and winter places from November onwards. It is an artist-run co-living residency and project space in Berlin for artists who need room to create, experiment and collaborate. With my artist visa restrictions loosened, I am also opening late 2026 and 2027 books for commercial fabrication, set design and large-scale installation work. For festival, brand-event or agency projects, contact shona.designs.studios@gmail.com or visit https://www.shonadesigns.store. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/philly-cheese-steak-norovirus-queer) ### Does Being an Artist Make Me a Bad Employee? Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-does-being-an-artist-make-me-a-bad/ Published: 2026-06-09 Summary: A 3 a.m. Berlin walk through self-employment, panic, murals, THE FLOOR, CounterCult, tattoos and the work of staying independent. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Berlin artist, public murals, THE FLOOR, cultural projects Article text: Three in the morning in Berlin At 3 a.m., the Berlin sky was deciding whether it was setting or rising as I went down into the U-Bahn with the other witching-hour people. I had just left a hidden underground party, thanks to Eva putting me on the guest list. The meeting on the way home was also work: an artist had booked me for the following month. After roughly a decade of self-employment, I have made peace with the fact that my life does not fit a corporate nine-to-five. The next job often comes through a person you met in the world, so I keep moving through the noise, looking for the people building something alive. My tattoos have become markers of those encounters, a walking gallery of experiences and friends’ work. The panic underneath independence When the low season arrived and bookings dried up, I watched my emergency savings disappear and started interviewing for corporate jobs. My visa restrictions stopped that route, and three interviews reminded me that I am a bad employee when I cannot build with my own hands. A desk and a full-time Trello board feel like a slow death to me. The safety of a nine-to-five is not as stable as it looks during a recession. My way through has included late parties, greasy food work, web3 and culture-tech events, village dances, dinners where nobody shares a language and clothes ruined by paint. It is not a clean career plan, but it is the life I keep choosing. The work I am building I am booking Sketchy Shona original murals and public art installations along the East Coast in August, including New York. A mural can become a permanent landmark for a place, not simply an image for a campaign. I launched THE FLOOR as an artist-run co-living residency and project space. It has hosted five emerging artists, with the calendar booked through autumn at the time of writing. Countercult is cultural infrastructure through which I have been working with VC firms and co-working ecosystems including The Delta in Berlin. Rooms, gatherings and public work At THE FLOOR I curate salon nights, including a Japan and CreativeTech evening with Sayaka and a traditional Japanese tea tasting. I am also developing festival and installation work, and preparing DA SWAMP for 48 Stunden Neukölln from July 3rd to 5th, free to attend. I have returned to tattooing after a forced break caused by not having a proper sterile studio. I am running local art tours and street-art workshops, building Countercult as open cultural infrastructure, and working toward live drawing and tattooing in Berlin clubs such as Klunkerkranich. These forms remain connected to the artist archive rather than replacing it. What THE FLOOR holds Laura, a DJ from Paris, became the fifth resident. Applications for stays from November 2026 onwards ran for one to four months, and the next salon and DA SWAMP dates were part of the programme. The Floor gives the work a room where artists and visitors can meet it before it becomes a finished record. I am still a Berlin-based contemporary artist, founder of CounterCult and founder of THE FLOOR. I am learning how an independent art practice can become an archive, a place and a network without pretending the financial uncertainty has gone away. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/does-being-an-artist-make-me-a-bad) ### The Anima and Animus in Life, and Why Artists Get So Depressed Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-the-anima-and-animus-in-life-and/ Published: 2026-04-04 Summary: A personal account of South Africa, Berlin, mental states, the many selves inside an artist life, and updates from THE FLOOR. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Berlin artist, South Africa, THE FLOOR, artist studio Article text: South Africa, then Berlin I came back to Berlin from South Africa about three weeks ago and immediately had to catch up. In Soweto, I told people I was an artist looking for other artists and soon found myself in a van heading to Lucky’s jam night in his garage. He had started it 15 years earlier because apartheid and its history had left a shortage of supported creative spaces. I also met street artists at Track Side Studios. I toured NIROX with a South African organiser from the music scene and thought of Storm King Art Center in New York. At Wild Spirit along the Nature Valley coast, I stayed a week among locals, visitors and artists. Back in Berlin I looked for clients, went to the “Jesus in the Desert” performance by Berlin burlesque Softy, visited Ohr’s launch at the Orangerie in Neukölln, painted a section of the old Berlin Wall with Lulu from Limerick, and went to BAR TAUSEND to hear Natascha Roze. The selves I carry Carl Jung’s anima and animus describe unconscious qualities of the opposite gender within a person, at least according to the Wikipedia definition I found as a child of the internet. I was asked what I do to balance everything I do, and I still find the question confusing. Art is not an outlet I selected. It comes out of me like hair grows. I move between the crusty artist, the bougie gallery artist, the business person, the vagabond traveller and many other versions of myself. The business side and the art side can balance each other, but I still need to pay the bills. The weeks alone in nature helped me remember that. When the feeling goes quiet The highs are brief: good weather, money in the bank, an open road and a soundtrack. The downs can become depression, an overload of heavy feeling followed by numbness. I know I have to start clawing myself out and walk the line again. Creative people often struggle with depression, perhaps because we absorb so much from bodies, places and other people. That sensitivity can make the world ecstatic and overwhelming. Then the work starts, not as a choice but as a way to put outside what cannot stay inside. That is why I say being an artist is simply what I am. THE FLOOR updates THE FLOOR is my co-living and art-residency project in Berlin. Applications ran through its open call, and the monthly salon dinners bring creatives, thinkers and builders together around a theme. The first salon had already happened, and the next idea was a conversation about technology, AI and creativity. The next resident was Theodara, a musician and poet from Greece, arriving April 1st. Lulu, the previous resident from Ireland, is a street, visual and tattoo artist who painted many walls in Berlin and planned to return for street-art jams. I also reopened commissions. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/the-anima-and-animus-in-life-and) ### Am I Crazy, or Is It the Malaria Pills? Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-am-i-crazy-or-is-it-just-the-malaria/ Published: 2026-02-21 Summary: Field notes from the Limpopo, a difficult funding year, cultural research, a wall in Cape Town, and THE FLOOR’s Berlin open call. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Limpopo, Cape Town, THE FLOOR, cultural projects Article text: A beautiful place, an uncertain mind I had not received any of the funding I applied for this year, and the financial reality had started to feel heavy. I was exhausted, taking malaria pills and wondering whether the strange emotions belonged to the medication or to the career itself. Then I looked up from a hut in the Limpopo region after a trek to a waterfall a local had shown us. There was a wall waiting for me in Cape Town. I was living the life I wanted and still felt suffocated by it. This is not a newsletter with answers. It is a record of being present inside that contradiction. Why I was in the Limpopo I was doing field research and plotting with my cofounder Danaja. I connected with artists and planned to leave a mark at Blue Gecko artist studios in Cape Town, run by Monica, who became a friend. We were also recording video interviews with locals about culture. Danielle, the CEO of a sustainable tourism startup, invited me on a road trip into the middle of nowhere. I said yes and ran into a pack of giraffes. I travel now to connect artists and cultural practitioners, even when the route includes potholes. CounterCult, the partly vibe-coded open-source cultural infrastructure platform, is part of that work. The pills were not the whole story The anxiety came from how unknown everything felt. I was looking for a living mentor, not only the figures I grew up with: Amelia Earhart, Joan of Arc, Indiana Jones, Georgia O’Keeffe, Thelma and Louise, Anthony Bourdain and pirates. Perhaps the work is to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I become my own mentor. I will continue the cultural field research, paint a wall wherever I can and apply for remote freelance work. I am a design lead, and I still have a corporate bone or two in my body. Back to Berlin When I returned to Berlin, I planned a new mixed-media and tattoo series and expected to show its first pieces in the coming months. I reopened commissions and wrote about commissioning an artist as a job, not a mysterious favour. The projects on my list included CounterCult Studios, THE FLOOR’s open call, field research with Danaja, a possible mural connection with the cultural arm of the government in Pakistan, DA SWAMP with Niamh for 48 Hour Neukölln, an invitation back to Spain to restore and create work, freelance creative-lead work, a return to New York and Philly, and research with friends in Sardinia around heritage preservation and cultural infrastructure. THE FLOOR open call THE FLOOR is an artist-run project and co-living space in Berlin. It was already hosting its third resident, Lulu, an Irish tattoo and street artist, and accepting applications for new residents from April. The flat has multiple rooms, a studio and a private garden, making it a creative home for artists travelling through Berlin. The open call was an invitation to explain who you are, why you want to join and what you want to make there. I wrote this from Africa, without pretending that the path was settled. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/am-i-crazy-or-is-it-just-the-malaria) ### I Thought I’d Fucked Up My Life Before 30, So I Wrote It Down Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-i-thought-id-fucked-up-my-life-before/ Published: 2025-12-28 Summary: A first-person account of grief, money, freedom, creative work and the projects that shaped my year as an artist. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Berlin artist, original art, tattoo artist, THE FLOOR Article text: The year looked smaller online A few months after the death of someone I loved, I entered my first real existential crisis. I was about to turn 30 and wondered whether the work mattered, especially when the internet showed me teenagers with multi-million-dollar businesses, property portfolios and high-paying jobs. When I mapped the year instead of comparing it, I saw that I did not want to give my youth to a business, manage several properties or trade freedom for a corporate salary. I want control of my time and room to explore. This is the record I wrote for myself and for other creatives who feel lost. Experiments that became real work I started EXPERIMENT Art Residency with kora, planning it online, inviting eight artists we barely knew to live and work together in Vietnam, learning the hard way and turning it into a programme running in Berlin and returning in 2026. My cofounder Danaja and I received eight months of funding through the Grace Accelerator for CounterCult. I also joined a fully funded Rural Hackers residency in Anceu, rural Galicia, for two months, making paintings, installations and textile pieces from found objects. Painting, tattooing and a room Pink.Dot Berlin invited me to hold my first solo exhibition, with a stipend. I began tattooing and connected motifs from oil paintings to street art and tattoo flash, first testing that full-circle performance at the solo show. Eva Garland remembered my work from our Artel Fest group show and invited me to paint part of the Beach Stage for WHOLE Festival. I camped and created for days. I also began learning full-stack development so CounterCult could grow without waiting indefinitely for a developer. THE FLOOR and the numbers I moved into a ground-floor space with a small garden and started THE FLOOR as a Berlin project space, inspired by Gertrude Stein’s salon nights and Warhol’s Factory. The first salon night had happened, and an exhibition was next. Across the year I painted five large-scale murals, completed six private commissions, made 19 tattoos and took part in two exhibitions. I planned a 2026 trip to South Africa for art and tech. What the year paid After taxes, all the work brought in about 16k in 2025. I had worried that it was not enough, but it gave me a genuinely good quality of life, freedom and a way to get by because I live simply. With budgets cut for the next year, I expected to take design freelance work alongside the art. The number is part of the archive because an artist’s life is also made of rent, funding, commissions and choices about time. It does not cancel the paintings, murals, tattoos, residencies or rooms. It explains the conditions that let them exist. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/i-thought-id-fucked-up-my-life-before) ### Trying to Sell My Art Like a Medieval Peasant Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-trying-to-peddle-my-art-like-a-medieval/ Published: 2025-11-28 Summary: A Black Friday art sale, a digital burnout, and an honest account of why I am choosing newsletters, real conversations and the work itself. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, original art, art sale, digital burnout, artist archive Article text: A sale in the middle of a crash-out I had a crash-out for about the 40th time that year over existing online. Black Friday was also one of the best chances to sell work, and I needed to sell because bills exist and the paintings were taking up too much space. Most of the people who see my work are artists, and many of us are broke, but sharing still helps. So this is the awkward part where I ask you to look at the work or share the sale. I am trying to make a living from the objects I make, not hide the fact that an artist has to sell them. Why I left the feed I am not on social media, especially Instagram, because I cannot handle what it takes from me. I am not made to create clickbait, I do not agree with the direction of the internet, and I became addicted to an endless scroll that traded time, energy and human connection for fast dopamine. The feed stopped feeling like photographs of friends. It became insecurity, violence, clickbait and distraction arranged like a slot machine. That is not a neutral environment for making work. Touching grass by choice I may still appear on social media through scheduled posts made off the app, because I live in society and have bills. The newsletter is different. Email, text and meeting in real life let me reach a person rather than an algorithm. I am terrible at texting, but if we meet with an interesting quest I will talk for hours. Snail mail belongs here too. Write to me and I will write back. I care about making things, deep conversations, learning how to stay present, and adventure. I want the art to be strange because it is mine, not because a platform rewarded it. The last peddle The Black Friday sale was the practical request inside a larger decision. I want to paint and create without performing the clickbait dance when the payday never arrived. The newsletter, the available originals and the archive are ways to build a direct relationship around the work. The sale is not separate from the practice. It is one of the ways the practice keeps its time. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/trying-to-peddle-my-art-like-a-medieval) ### Right Place, Wrong Time: The Reality of an Artist in the Digital Age Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-right-place-wrong-time-the-reality/ Published: 2025-11-09 Summary: A train from Berlin to Paris, old artist cities, hard years, hands, money and the decision to give the next body of work enough time. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, Berlin artist, Paris, original paintings, THE FLOOR Article text: First-class delusions I was on a new high-speed train from Berlin to Paris, in first class because the route was still cheap to promote. Paris was my first stop before a funded project in Spain building free software with artists and hackers. It felt like being in the right place at the right time. When people talk about being an artist, I often hear that I should have arrived 15 years earlier. The timing is always part of the story, whether the place is Berlin, New York or the internet. Rocky Horror and the Berlin inheritance I first saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show in my early months in New York as a teenager. Artists there treated me as one of their own and took me to a screening in Chelsea that was also a live drag performance. Years later, Berlin still carries some of that same collision of theatre, outsiders and improvised survival. I left New York because I felt I should have been there in the 1980s to survive in its scrappiest form. I first visited Berlin at 19, then waited five years to qualify for the artist visa. By the time I arrived, the post-Communist squats had largely been bought, costs had risen and everyone was still trying to hang on. The artist neighbourhood In Berlin I showed Rocky Horror to drag-artist friends in a cold Neukölln apartment while we ate soup. We live in a version of the 1980s Lower East Side, with rats, hard street scenes and dinners that need earning. When a man fell through my ceiling, a friend compared it to the broke artists in Moulin Rouge!, where someone also falls through a roof. The stereotype is uncomfortable because it is accurate. I am trying to make a life in which the difficult parts do not become the whole story. Hands before the next body of work For several years I painted hands and worked in realistic oil painting. Hands are difficult, and the technical discipline mattered, but the deeper truth was that I was avoiding vulnerability. I was exhausted and did not yet have the time to go further into the work. Now I am making that time. The next series is more conceptual, concerned with inner life and human experience in an over-connected digital age, with a touch of mental instability. THE FLOOR is part of that decision: my Berlin version of a project space shaped by the salon and the factory. The sale and the next movement I put past pieces from those five years into a discounted art sale because I was tired of looking at them and still did not want to be starving. That sale is part of the practical life around the work. The practice moves forward through calculated risks, time and the willingness to show what is uncomfortable. A painting can enter a collection, a room can become an archive, and a place like THE FLOOR can give the next work somewhere to meet people. Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/right-place-wrong-time-the-reality) ### An Artist, a Child of the Internet, and a Foot from the Ceiling Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-an-artist-a-child-of-the-internet/ Published: 2025-10-04 Summary: A personal record of leaving social media behind, a commission for Australia, and the strange construction accident that changed my studio plans. Topics: Sketchy Shona, artist life, original paintings, artist studio, commissions, art archive Article text: A foot through the ceiling A literal foot fell through my ceiling during construction. I took it as a sign that I needed to rethink how I was living and working, although I did not expect the sign to be anatomical. I do not remember a life without computers. In kindergarten I was already typing and drawing with software, while the artistic education around me still privileged drafting by hand. Later, finding work as an artist became tied to social media and the demand to post constantly. The number that follows you I was told I would not be considered for a gig without 10,000 followers. I spent a year blocking out advice to post more, follow trends and dance between images of war, cats and weddings. I am an artist, not a clickbait content creator. When I looked at the pattern, the work sustaining me most did not come from social media. It came from people I had met and spoken with years earlier. They remembered me and later commissioned murals and installations or found ways to fund my travel to make them. They cared less about my digital footprint than my cultural footprint. A commission with a long memory I met Meg in Istanbul seven years ago. She was there for about ten hours, but stayed in touch. This year she commissioned two pieces for her new home in Australia, based on the place where she met her partner. The reference photographs were low quality and blurry, which left room to work from their meaning: blue, green lakes and a huge sky. We made an inspiration page of textures, palettes and colours, and I began a seven-layer process. Australian customs law made framed canvas impractical, so we chose two soft chalk pastel pieces on paper that could be trimmed to flexible dimensions and placed into framing already purchased. Meg and her partner came to my bedroom studio in Berlin to collect them, then sent photographs of the works installed in Australia. A different kind of connection The commission showed me that I can be less visible online while still allowing people to understand how I work. The website, the newsletter and the archive can hold the deeper reasons behind a piece, rather than asking every work to become daily content. I am trying to survive as a working artist while building a place where people can enter the work. The plan is a flat that is part home, part studio and part event space. I still have to solve the financing, but the foot made the need impossible to ignore. The work after the feed My digital footprint began before I could remember, likely with an innocent childhood photograph now available to train AI. I cannot reverse that history, but I can decide how I interact with the present. I am returning to email and to direct relationships because I care about creating. A commission, an original painting, a mural or an installation can leave a physical and editorial record. That record lasts longer than a post, and it is the beginning of an archive with authority of its own. Related sources: - [View past commission examples](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Contact the studio about a commission](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/contact) - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/an-artist-a-child-of-the-internet) ### Paint, Rent, Repeat: Welcome to My Sketchy Reality Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/substack-paint-rent-repeat-welcome-to-my-sketchy/ Published: 2025-08-02 Summary: My first Substack note introduces the working life behind Sketchy Shona: painting, rent, uncertainty, CounterCult, EXPERIMENT and the reasons I keep sharing. Topics: artist life, studio notes, Berlin, New York, The Floor, painting and murals, CounterCult, EXPERIMENT Article text: Transcript Thanks for being here. You have to subscribe if you want the future newsletters. Welcome to Sketchy Reality, a name I chose because I sketch a lot, and because life as an artist can go sketchy in ways that are less charming than the name suggests. You are here for the ride. You may already be a little sketchy yourself. You may be curious about what a real working artist’s life looks like. Or you may be my dad, checking whether I am financially stable as an almost 30 year old. Either way, welcome. I am SketchyShona, an American and a military brat, so do not ask where exactly I am from unless you want a long answer. I am currently based in Berlin. I work in oil paint, installations, murals and street art, and I occasionally poke people with tattoo needles. The work keeps returning to love, joy, contentness, grief and the human experience, all the feeling really. I used to be a closed book. I am beginning to understand that sharing creation and the experience of life is part of being an artist, not a distraction from it. I also get bored with myself, as I am sure you will, so I look for other creative people to document through the groups I co-run. CounterCult is a platform that gets artists fairly paid. EXPERIMENT is an international residency for artists, run by artists. This newsletter is not a claim that I have figured anything out. It is a place to show what sits behind the social media smoke and mirrors: working-class artist life, the mess between gigs, a floor covered in ink, bills and half-drunk coffee, the way a painting can break me, and the tension between art and survival. There will be chaos too. I will share studio notes, works in progress and photographs of whatever is drying on my walls. I will write about being a human in this world, send event updates and performance invitations, and probably include a rant when something gets my mind going. I plan to send something every month, sometimes more and sometimes less depending on what is burning. You can reply to the emails. I read them. If something feels useful, forward it to someone who might need it. Some editions will also appear in audio or video if you would rather see or hear me. Art is not a product to me. It is a process, and you are now part of mine. I never wanted to do this alone. Stay sketchy, Shona Related sources: - [Originally published on Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/p/paint-rent-repeat-welcome-to-my-sketchy) ### Rural Hackers: Making Work in Anceu Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/rural-hackers-goethe-institut-anceu/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: A Goethe-Institut-linked residency took Sketchy Shona to Anceu in rural Galicia, where murals, found doors and a portrait grew from local time and relationships. Topics: Rural Hackers, Goethe-Institut, Anceu, Galicia, residency, public art Article text: Anceu was a place, not a backdrop Rural Hackers took me out of Berlin and into Anceu, a small village in Galicia. The change was immediate. There was no city density or visual noise to hide behind. I had to pay attention to what was already there and to the people who would live with whatever I made. The residency was funded through a Goethe-Institut-linked programme. That fact matters, but it is not the whole record. The work came from the time, materials and relationships the place made possible: a mural inside the village, an installation using found material, and a portrait of Rogelio, described in the source material as a respected member of Anceu village. Letting the village alter the work The work moved between an interior mural, found doors, Rogelio’s portrait and local references including the village dog Tambor. I did not want to bring a portable version of Berlin and install it unchanged. I wanted the place to alter what could be made, what could be shared and what might remain after I left. The mural brings a village landscape, buildings, figures, animals and black and white drawings into one working room. The installation carries that attention into old doors and painted forms, keeping their material history visible instead of covering it with a neutral surface. A residency held in the archive Rural Hackers belongs beside my murals, installations and studio records because it shows the work under different conditions. The image remains recognisable, but the surrounding system changes. The wall becomes a meeting point between an artist, a village and the people deciding what culture can do locally. I keep this as a residency and place-based project, not as a travel anecdote. It records what happens when Sketchy Shona has to answer to somewhere specific. ### Sketchy Sessions at Klunkerkranich: Drawing in Public Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/sketchy-sessions-klunkerkranich/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: At Klunkerkranich, live drawing, a jazz jam and DJs from the Countercult network shared one Berlin room, making the act of drawing part of the night. Topics: Sketchy Sessions, Klunkerkranich, Berlin, live drawing, collaboration, Countercult Article text: The drawing had to live with the room Sketchy Sessions was made with Klunkerkranich as a public collaboration, not as a private demonstration. I drew alongside music, conversation and the loose movement of a Berlin night. The mark had to remain itself while letting other people, sounds and rhythms enter the frame. The event brought live drawing, a jazz jam and DJs from the wider Countercult network into one setting. My role was not to provide decoration. I made drawing part of the social architecture of the night. A live mark carries pressure A drawing made in front of people can look temporary, but temporary does not mean lesser. The pressure is simply different from studio work. Decisions are visible, the room responds and the work has to hold attention without becoming a performance of personality. Fast figures, creatures and marks are useful in that condition. They can react to a place while remaining specific enough to be recognised as Sketchy Shona. A collaboration with its own record Klunkerkranich belongs in the archive because it shows the practice moving through a partner venue without becoming a generic event service. The venue, music, network and drawing remain visible together. For programmers, cultural venues and partners, the distinction matters. I am not simply putting an artist in a room. I am making a situation in which the artist’s work can meet a real public. ### The Work Changes Shape: Sketches from Klunkerkranich Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-work-changes-shape-klunkerkranich/ Published: 2026-09-24 Summary: I drew these working sketches during Sketchy Shona Sessions at Klunkerkranich. They move between tattoos, paste-ups, street art and the wider collection developing across fine art, objects and fashion. Topics: Sketchy Sessions, Klunkerkranich, Berlin, jazz, nature, working sketches, tattoo, paste-up, street art, fine art, objects, fashion Article text: The night they came from I made these drawings during Sketchy Shona Sessions at Klunkerkranich. A jazz jam and DJs from the Countercult network shared the event with live drawing. I was drawing from jazz, Berlin, the city, nature and night. The event is the starting point, not the full subject. These sketches are what I carried away from that setting and kept working through after the session. These are working sketches The drawings are not a tattoo-only collection or a finished menu. They are my Sketchy sketches, the material I take into tattoo sessions and use for paste-ups and street art. A sketch can change as it moves onto skin or a wall. I want to keep the connection to the starting drawing visible without pretending that every use has to look the same. One practice, more than one form The same sketches can give me a way into fine art, objects and fashion as I develop the wider collection. Those are not separate ideas added after the fact. They are directions the work can take as I keep drawing and testing what a mark can become. If someone only sees the tattoo, they may miss the path the drawing took. I want the archive to show how one practice moves across forms, while giving each work its own material and context. A record that will keep growing I am still developing these concepts. I will add more images and process material as the collection grows, so this Journal record can show not only the finished marks but how I carry an idea from its first sketch into other forms. ### DA SWAMP: A Temporary World in 48 Stunden Neukölln Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/da-swamp-48-stunden-neukoelln/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: DA SWAMP used the 48 Stunden Neukölln context to bring drawings, bodies, flash tattoos, objects and exchange into a temporary cultural world. Topics: DA SWAMP, 48 Stunden Neukölln, Berlin, Countercult, cultural infrastructure, exhibition Article text: The festival gave the project its public life DA SWAMP was not simply an exhibition scheduled during 48 Stunden Neukölln. The festival gave it a public condition. People moved through Neukölln, found rooms, followed fragments and decided how long to stay. I used Berlin’s swamp as a way to speak about the cultural layer beneath the official city: the people, spaces, small exchanges and strange forms that make a neighbourhood feel alive before anyone turns it into a clean cultural proposition. A room made from bodies and objects DA SWAMP brought together Sketchy Shona, Countercult, Niamh-Erin Cusack and ohhi_uisce in a temporary world of drawings, moving sketches, flash tattoos, objects, bodies and the room itself. It was not a neat sequence of isolated works. People could enter it and alter it simply by being there. The chair, bottle, radio, Späti reference, Fernsehturm and tattoo sheet are part of the record. They are not props added to make an installation look busy. They are everyday signals through which a cultural underlayer becomes visible. Access still needs people to hold it DA SWAMP tested what it means to make a temporary project accessible through free or pay-what-you-can participation. Openness does not mean an absence of structure. Someone still has to hold the room, relationships, invitations and conditions that make public involvement possible. I keep DA SWAMP as a cultural project, not only an exhibition listing. It shows me working as an artist and curator inside a wider network, while Countercult remains distinct cultural infrastructure and the practices remain publicly distinct. ### A Shared Internship, Two Distinct Practices Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/shared-internship-countercult-sketchy-shona/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: The person interning with Countercult is also Sketchy Shona’s intern, working across two connected practices that share a founder but retain different purposes. Topics: internship, Countercult, The Floor, Sketchy Shona, artist studio, cultural work Article text: One intern, two practices The intern working with Countercult is also my intern at Sketchy Shona. That is the real structure, and it is more useful to name it than to hide it behind a vague studio label. Countercult and Sketchy Shona share a founder, a history and some physical context. They do not have the same public purpose. Countercult is cultural infrastructure. Sketchy Shona is an artist practice. The internship crosses between them without collapsing the distinction. What becomes visible across the work On the Countercult side, the intern encounters networks, cultural infrastructure, place-led work and the practical conditions around artists and projects. On my side, they encounter the archive, studio, exhibitions, objects, image-making and the decisions required to make a body of work public. That is a more honest education than treating art as a set of finished images. It shows how a practice is held through records, relationships, production, writing, invitations and the unglamorous work that lets other people participate. The Floor holds the connection The Floor sits between these worlds as a private studio and project room. It can hold a Countercult conversation, a Sketchy Shona work session, a residency or an exhibition context, but the room does not make the organisations interchangeable. This belongs in the Sketchy Shona Journal because the people behind the work are part of the archive. The artist is not isolated, and the studio is not a content machine. It is a working environment with shared labour, separate identities and real responsibility. Related sources: - [Read Shona Neary's Countercult founder record](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/countercult-founder/) ### Sketchy Shona in the Street-Art Context Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/sketchy-shona-street-art-context/ Published: 2026-09-11 Summary: Teufelsberg, paste-ups, workshops and festivals show street art as one public condition of a wider Sketchy Shona practice. Topics: street art, Berlin, Teufelsberg, murals, public art, artist-led experiences Article text: The street changes how a mark is read In a street-art context, I am not best described as a mural painter who also makes other things. The street is one condition in which my practice becomes public: a wall, passage, former listening station, festival stage or neighbourhood route changes how an image is seen. The marks have to survive weather, movement, scale and the fact that most people did not come to see them. That public pressure is part of the work. It differs from the protected attention of a gallery, but it is not less serious. A Berlin record from Teufelsberg outward The Teufelsberg Urban Art Gallery records place the work in a specifically Berlin street-art setting across 2022, 2024 and 2025. Paste-ups, murals and public interventions put the drawing language inside a living city rather than on a neutral white wall. At Whole Festival, Eva Garland hired Sketchy Shona as the painter and we painted approximately 40% of the Beach Stage. That role and credit are specific. The work still belongs to the larger question of what an image does when it has to hold a public place. The artist can also host the route Street art is not only the finished wall. My Berlin work also includes walks, paste-up workshops, open studio contexts and conversations that help people understand how a place is made. Sometimes I make the mark, sometimes I open the route, and sometimes I do both. The archive therefore needs more than mural photographs. It should preserve location, role, people, conditions and the relationship between public work and the studio language behind it. A wall with a longer memory Street art gives Sketchy Shona a public reach, but it does not define the whole practice. The wall connects to the tattoo, object, lamp, exhibition and Journal because the same figures and pressures keep changing surface. That makes the archive useful to street-art audiences, Berlin cultural visitors, curators, festivals, fashion and object collaborators, and collectors looking for the original work behind the public mark. ### Pink Spy at The Floor: A Sketchy Shona Residency Journal Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/pink-spy-the-floor-art-residency/ Published: 2026-09-09 Summary: A visual diary by Pink Spy of a month in Berlin at The Floor, the Sketchy Shona studio and project room, with DA SWAMP, Späti, drag shows and artist connections. Topics: Pink Spy, The Floor, Berlin, artist residency, DA SWAMP, 48 Stunden Neukölln Article text: Pink Spy presents In July I had an incredibly cool opportunity to go to Berlin for a month thanks to my internship. During this time I stayed at "The Floor" art residency together with other artists (special shoutout to Shona) and had the chance to see the life of an artist, which before this had been an incomprehensible concept considering the fact that in art school the teachers just tend to advise you to go teaching after finishing the art degree. Either way, I experienced behind the scenes of creating an exhibition called "The Swamp", got to see incredible works from the art festival "48 Stunden Neukölln", with the help of other artists and Späti workers, and my friend had the opportunity to create our exhibition as well. I got to see and be a part of Berlin's culture and, with the help of others, I was able to experience Berlin from a locals perspective. Meeting the artists I almost immediately was able to feel welcomed and at home at "The Floor" art residency and I would say that it didn't feel like living with strangers but more felt like living with family members. I like to look at it as my family members from the art world. Shona was the first artist that I met in Berlin and I really appreciated the honesty and understanding as well as the guidance and help that I received from this artist. Shortly after I met another artist, Lulu from Ireland and later because of the Swamp I was able to meet Niamh, also an artist originally from Ireland (I want to go to Ireland now). These connections are so important to me because they made me realize how important it is to have community and safe spaces for open and honest discussions about art in this time and age and life, ideas and more. Da Swamp The Swamp was a really swampy exhibition and I am so glad that I got to experience the process of creating a space for art and people. We had to make decorations for the space with materials that the artists provided us with (by us I mean me and my friend Mona who was also working together with me) and it really pushed us to use the creative parts of our brains to figure out how to make the best possible outcome, that being swampy decorations, by the materials that we had and at the end we did a really great job. Apparently, we received positive feedback and I went to bed feeling really happy and loved that night. I also had the pleasure to meet and have conversations with other creatives and art enthusiasts. Also, I would like to mention that for Swamp me, Eliza and Shona made rat tales to represent Rathouse Yoo!! Here is a photo by @soyboy.photographer on Instagram. Here are two pictures of Ratmona aka Eliza in the process of creating decorations for the outside. I had so much fun with helping :D Other whereabouts We did some thinking about the ways in which artists can promote and make money off of artworks and after this coffee shop date that we had we got lost in the repetitive and similar streets of Berlin that go on and on and on, but it was still interesting. I want to give a special shoutout to Eliza for always guiding me and taking the responsibility of Google Maps because without her I don't think that I would've made it to "The Floor" in the first place. Berlin kept opening up In the middle of Swamp and after the Swamp we were heavily whearing about Berlin. We went out to see other exhibitions that were apart of "48 Stunden Neukölln" festival and we also visited other artist's studios, helped out with another project and in the middle of us helping out we suddenly got an opportunity to see a drag show. The drag show was amazing but at first I thought that it's only gonna be presented in German so I tried to manipulate myself into thinking that I understand what is going on but sooner or later I realized that after the German part follows an explanation in English as well so all was good. I also got a cool poster for free and I was happy to learn about drag kings because in my country I usually hear only about drag queens. Either way I love everybody and special shoutout to Eva! Spati exhibition :D The Spati exhibition was one of the most important tasks of my internship that included all of the necessary components that are needed to make a project happen. Firstly there had to be something to exhibit and that is why I started to explore my love for collage and different colour combinations. Parallel to that me and Eliza started filming clips with the goal to make a short and abstract video considering the fact that it would go well together with the collage. We had fun with the process and after that we had to find a place in which we could exhibit our works. We had to communicate with Späti workers and owners to find the right spot, figure out the logistics with the shop's interior, also we had to create posters and work on social media to spread the word about our exhibition and where to find it. Thank you Berlin This experience gave me more than a month in another city. It gave me a way to meet artists, work with people, make things in real spaces, and understand how much a residency depends on the relationships around it. I am very grateful to Berlin and to "The Floor". See you soon! ### Berlin Street Art Is Not the Whole Practice Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/berlin-street-art-is-not-the-whole-practice/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: Berlin street art, Teufelsberg, murals and paste-ups are public conditions of a wider Sketchy Shona practice across painting, objects, tattoos and rooms. Topics: Berlin, street art, Teufelsberg, murals, public art, emerging artist Article text: The wall is only one condition I do not think of myself as a mural painter who happens to make other things. Berlin street art is one condition in which the work becomes public. A wall, passage, former listening station, festival stage or neighbourhood route changes how an image is seen. The mark has to survive weather, movement, scale and the fact that most people did not come to see it. That pressure is part of the work. It is different from gallery attention, but it is not less serious. Teufelsberg keeps a longer record The Teufelsberg Urban Art Gallery records place the work in a specifically Berlin street-art context across 2022, 2024 and 2025. Paste-ups, murals and public interventions put the drawing language inside a living city rather than on a neutral white wall. That is why the archive needs the location, year, conditions and role, not only a photograph. Public work is evidence of the practice, not its whole definition. From the street into a room The same visual language can move from a Berlin wall into a tattoo, painting, piece of furniture, festival stage or installation. The surface changes, but the question stays close: what does a figure do when it has to hold a real place and real attention? DA SWAMP made that movement visible. Drawings, tattoos, objects, bodies and the room became one temporary event at The Floor. Street art is part of that wider system. Berlin is a working condition Berlin is not a backdrop I use to make the work look more interesting. It is a working condition, with its own speed, clubs, artists, ruins, independent rooms and public arguments about who gets to belong where. I want the street-art archive to keep the specific places and relationships that let an image leave the studio and enter public life, rather than preserving a fantasy of Berlin. ### Live Painting Is a Different Kind of Drawing Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/live-painting-is-a-different-kind-of-drawing/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: Live painting is drawing under social pressure, with music, light and people changing the conditions while the image is still being made. Topics: live painting, live art, Berlin, New York, experiential art, festival art Article text: The room moves with the image A live painting is not a finished image enlarged for an audience. The audience is part of the condition. Music changes the pace, people interrupt the frame, light changes colour and the work must stay open while it is being made. That makes live art a different kind of drawing. It is less protected than studio work, but that exposure is the point. The mark has to communicate before it has explained itself. Whole Festival and the Beach Stage For Whole Festival, Eva Garland was the creative director and hired me as the painter. I painted approximately 40% of the Beach Stage. The role was specific. I was not supplying a generic decoration package. I was carrying my authored language into a large public setting. A festival stage is temporary architecture. People meet it while arriving, dancing, waiting, filming and leaving. The image becomes part of the memory of the place rather than a separate object that people must stop to admire. Drawing among clubs and artists Club and artist-run spaces matter to this way of working. At Klunkerkranich, live drawing, a jazz jam and DJs brought drawing into the social structure of the night. At DA SWAMP, live work sat alongside tattoos, objects and an exhibition room. I am interested in the point where an audience stops being a crowd and becomes a temporary group. Live painting gives people something to watch become real without turning the room into a lecture. What a partner is commissioning A partner commissioning live art is commissioning more than an image. They are commissioning attention, atmosphere, pace and a record of an event that could not have existed in exactly the same way elsewhere. The useful brief includes the place, audience, sound, timing and reason for the gathering. From there, I can find the form that lets the event remain itself while leaving a physical and editorial record. ### Tattooing as a Permanent Extension of the Work Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/tattooing-as-permanent-extension-of-the-work/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: Custom tattoos, artist flash and live tattooing extend Sketchy Shona’s drawing practice onto a person’s body and into the life they carry. Topics: tattoo, tattoo art, Berlin tattoo artist, artist flash, live tattooing, living art Article text: A mark changes when it enters skin Tattooing is not a smaller painting and it is not merchandise. A drawing has to work with a body, a person, its placement, the passage of time and the fact that it cannot simply be taken off a wall. That permanence changes how I think about the mark. A tattoo can be strange, funny, tender or difficult, but it has to be clear enough to live with and open enough to keep changing as the person changes. Flash is an active archive Artist flash is often treated as a menu. I see it as a living archive of forms ready to leave the page. Creatures, bodies, objects and short forms can be chosen, moved, combined or made specific to the person who will carry them. The flash sheets connect to the wider Sketchy Shona archive. A figure can move from sketch to painting, painting to tattoo and tattoo to room without becoming the same thing twice. The permanent decision in public Live tattooing makes a permanent decision visible. The room watches preparation, conversation, concentration and the moment an image becomes part of a body. It is a different kind of live art, with the same interest in trust and attention. In Berlin, it can happen inside the culture of clubs, artist-run rooms and temporary events. It belongs to the same public world as live drawing, even though the responsibility is much more intimate. An enquiry with a body behind it A serious tattoo enquiry starts with the reason for the image, placement, scale and relationship to the existing body. I am not interested in making every possible style. I want to make the Sketchy Shona language specific to the person who will live with it. The result should feel permanent without feeling frozen. That is the standard. ### New York and Berlin, and the work between them Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/new-york-berlin-emerging-artist-practice/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: I am building Sketchy Shona between New York and Berlin, through painting, public work, tattooing, live art, objects and the realities of making a life. Topics: Sketchy Shona, New York, Berlin, artist studio, contemporary artist, original art Article text: Two cities, different pressures I am based between New York and Berlin because both cities are part of my working life, but they do not ask the same thing of an artist. New York carries speed, density, ambition and a direct relationship to work and money. Berlin offers a different relationship to time, subculture, public space and collective life. Moving between them does not make the practice more glamorous. It makes the conditions more visible. Each city asks what can be made, who it can reach and what kind of independence is possible. Emerging means building the structure I can use the phrase emerging artist when it describes a career still making its own infrastructure. I do not want it to suggest that the work is not serious. An artist can be emerging in one market and already known within a particular community. The archive needs to hold the full record: exhibitions, client work, murals, tattoos, writing, objects, rooms, failures, experiments and the people who made the next step possible. A mark becomes a body of work, and the record of that body gives it somewhere to go. New York stays in the work New York is part of my biography and working history, from studying fine art there to the Whitney Museum staff exhibition, Artel Fest and the clients and creative relationships that have shaped the wider record. It is also a future working ground. I do not want New York to function as a location tag. I want to keep a live connection between the city, the people there and the forms the work can take in that context. Berlin is an active room Berlin has given the practice rooms, walls, stages, studios, festivals and the conditions for DA SWAMP and The Floor. Those are specific parts of the work's history, not interchangeable scenery. That is why the artist website needs to be more than a statement of nationality. It is a map of where the work has evidence, how it moves and what kind of invitation makes sense next. A practice becomes an archive The long-term task is to keep the paintings, objects, public murals, tattoos, installations and cultural projects in relation without pretending they are the same thing. The Journal and archive are part of that institution in formation. When a body of work is documented carefully, it can be read by a collector, curator, institution or selective partner without losing its origin. That is the infrastructure I am building between the two cities. ### An artist-led partnership has to outlive the campaign Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/artist-led-brand-partnerships-not-campaign-content/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: A partnership with Sketchy Shona can move through products, fashion, spaces and cultural projects while keeping the work authored, physical and connected to a longer archive. Topics: artist-led brand partnerships, fashion, artist collaboration, cultural project, public murals, installations Article text: The practice comes first The strongest artist-led partnership does not begin with a blank moodboard. It begins with work that already has pressure, material decisions and a reason to exist outside a campaign. That is the difference between commissioning an artist and asking for a style. When the work enters a product, fashion context, wall, room or public event, it should still be recognisably Sketchy Shona. A mark can take several forms The work can move through an authored object, an edition, a live painting, a public mural, a fashion image, a retail intervention, an installation or a cultural programme. The format is not the identity. The relationship between the mark, the place and the people is. A physical intervention can give a partner more than campaign content. A mural or installation can become a local landmark. A place-led project can give a venue an identity, while leaving photographs, objects, editorial material and a public memory that continue after launch. The record is more useful than a logo wall The public archive includes confirmed work with Fendi, New York Fashion Week, MoMA, Ann Taylor, Sunday Natural, Tommy Hilfiger and venture-backed startups. It also includes cultural and public settings such as Whole Festival, where Eva Garland hired me as the painter and I painted approximately 40% of the Beach Stage. Those records matter because they show different conditions for the same practice. I want to document what actually happened, rather than flattening the work into a list of logos or implying a project that is not recorded. The right partnership leaves something behind I am interested in a partnership when there is a real reason for the work to exist. That might be a product with a strong material idea, a space that needs a visual identity, a fashion project that wants an authored world, or a cultural event that understands the value of live attention. A useful enquiry names the place, audience, timing, scale and question behind the collaboration. From there, the studio can decide whether the response belongs as an object, edition, wall, room, live act or a form not yet named. ### Objects, editions and wear that can carry the work Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/retail-artist-objects-editions-and-wear/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: I am interested in objects, furniture, editions and wearable art when a drawing can survive daily use without losing the strange pressure that made it worth noticing. Topics: artist objects, editions, wearable art, sculptural furniture, original art, artist shop Article text: Retail is a material question I am interested in retail when it gives an image another kind of life. An object is held, used, worn, placed, moved and eventually remembered. That is a different responsibility from putting a drawing on a wall. The question is not how to turn everything into merchandise. It is which forms can survive contact with daily life without losing the pressure that made them worth noticing. An object can remain an artwork The Human Cocoon lamp and silver form sit between sculpture and use. They are not props for a lifestyle image. They have their own physical logic, connected to a drawing, a body and a room. The archive and the Shop therefore remain different rooms. A work can matter to the practice without being current inventory. A retail release should be deliberate, photographed, described and actually available. The portable mark An edition, garment or wearable object can carry a mark into a street, club, retail space or somebody's private life, where it gathers evidence the studio could not have planned. The forms do not need to become polite because they are portable. They can stay funny, abrasive, tender, excessive or unresolved. That continuity is what separates an artist object from a product borrowing an art reference. Release the thing the work requires The next object should arrive because the work requires it, not because a calendar needs a drop. A release can have a clear edition size, material story, price, place and reason to exist, once those details are confirmed. That discipline protects the artist, collector and partner. It also lets the Shop remain quiet until there is something real to put in it. ### Subculture is part of the material Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/subculture-is-a-medium/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: Clubs, artist-run rooms, underground scenes and temporary communities are not background to my work. They shape how it is made, shared and remembered. Topics: subculture, artist-run space, Berlin, The Floor, DA SWAMP, cultural projects Article text: The scene is part of the material Subculture is not an aesthetic I can borrow for a campaign. It is a set of relationships, rooms, rituals and risks that people keep alive because the official version of culture is not enough. That makes it a medium. A club, basement, independent gallery, former listening station or garden behind a studio changes what can be made and who can encounter it. DA SWAMP and The Floor DA SWAMP was built inside The Floor during 48 Stunden Neukölln. It brought drawings, moving sketches, flash tattoos, objects, bodies and live work into one temporary room. The room was not a neutral container. People came through, stayed, talked, got tattooed, watched things happen and changed the atmosphere by being there. The event became part of the work's record because the social conditions were part of its form. An artist-run room has another kind of time The Floor is a private studio and project room, not a public venue that needs to pretend every moment is available. Its value comes from holding work while it is still becoming precise. A residency, salon, exhibition, conversation or production day can become part of the archive when the room is held properly. The physical setting gives the work time and gives people a way to encounter it outside a feed. Keep the cultural roles clear I built Countercult to support the infrastructure around living culture. Sketchy Shona is the artist practice, The Floor is the room and Countercult is the public network and economic infrastructure. They can be connected without becoming the same thing. Keeping those distinctions visible is how people, work, credit and responsibility stay accurate while the network keeps moving. ### Give a new office a point of view Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/artist-led-interiors-for-new-offices/ Published: 2026-09-12 Summary: Original paintings, murals, objects and installations can give a new office an identity rooted in its building, people and purpose instead of a catalogue. Topics: artist-led interiors, office design, workplace art, site-specific art, commissions, artist-led brand partnerships Article text: A new office has a point of view When a company moves into a new office, the interior is often treated as a final layer: a few large prints, plants, a reception desk and a wall that needs something on it. The result can look finished without feeling specific. An artist can enter earlier. The work can respond to the architecture, the people using the room, the pace of the business and the atmosphere the team wants to create. It can give the interior a point of view that is not available from a catalogue. Let the work move through the room I work across painting, drawing, murals, objects, installation and tattooing. An interior does not have to stop at one framed canvas. The work can move across a wall, sculptural object, piece of furniture, wayfinding detail or private room. The point is not to decorate every surface. It is to decide where a mark should hold attention, where it can sit quietly and where the room needs a physical interruption. A strong office has different temperatures, and the work can help establish them. A practical conversation with the project team The useful first conversation is practical. What is the building? Who uses it? Which spaces are public, private, social or transitional? What is fixed already, and where can the work change the atmosphere without fighting the architecture? An interior designer does not need an artist to imitate a moodboard. The better relationship is exact: the designer holds the spatial system, and I bring a visual world that can withstand the room. Materials, scale, installation conditions, budget and maintenance can be discussed without making the work generic. A workplace can carry culture The strongest new offices do not only communicate what a company sells. They show how it thinks, what it values and what kind of attention it makes space for. Original art makes that culture tangible when it is commissioned for the place rather than purchased as an afterthought. That might mean a site-responsive painting, a group of works for a founder's office, an installation for a common room, sculptural furniture for hospitality or a visual system across a workplace. The form should follow the room and the reason the work belongs there. Bring the building and the brief I am open to conversations with interior designers, architecture and design studios, founders, developers and teams creating new offices or cultural workplaces. A useful brief names the city, building, project stage, audience and part of the space that needs a stronger idea. The studio can then decide whether the response is a painting, mural, object, installation, collection of works or another format. ### Learning to paint hands while watching Berlin Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/painting-hands-watching-berlin/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: These earlier oil paintings record Berlin rooms, nightlife and the long effort to understand how a hand changes the emotional temperature of a picture. Topics: oil painting, Berlin, Berlin nightlife, figurative painting, portrait painting, painting hands, available originals, past work Article text: Older work still has a place in the archive These paintings are not a new collection. I made them over several years while learning what I wanted painting to do, watching the people and rooms around me and trying to make an image hold more than a quick impression. They are oil paintings on canvas, board or paper. Some are portraits. Some stay close to a hand, table, drink or body. Others are harder to place. Together they record a period of looking, testing and returning to the same problems from different directions. The work is older, but it shows the route into the paintings I am making now. Watching Berlin I was a voyeur of Berlin in the practical sense. I watched the city as a source of images: people in bars, at tables, in studios, at parties, in temporary rooms and in the quieter spaces around a night out. I noticed what people reveal when they are not presenting themselves for a portrait. Berlin's subcultural life gave me complicated scenes. The city is not only clubs and nightlife, and nightlife is not only entertainment. It is where people meet, perform themselves, disappear, make connections and build small worlds that may not exist elsewhere. Painting from that position meant being close enough to observe but not always close enough to explain. The paintings hold onto that distance. They are intimate, but they are not neutral. The room is in the hands Hands kept returning because they carry so much information. A hand can show how someone holds a glass, hides a face, touches another person, protects themselves, waits, smokes, eats or tries not to be seen. In several of these paintings, the hands are more direct than the faces. They give away the social situation and interrupt the image. A hand across a face changes a portrait. A hand on a table changes the relationship between people in a room. Painted fingers can make the whole picture feel exposed. Hands are difficult to paint I wanted to get better at painting hands because they are hard to fake. A face can survive approximation. A hand usually cannot. Proportion, joints, pressure and position all have to make sense at once. That difficulty gave me a reason to keep painting them. I was not pursuing technically perfect hands for their own sake. I wanted to understand how a gesture changes the emotional temperature of an image and can control its entire composition. Some hands work more successfully than others. That is why I want the older work visible. It shows the practice being built, rather than only the moments that already look resolved. Painting the social body The people in these works are rarely isolated from their surroundings. Drinks, jewellery, tables, clothing, animals, walls and fragments of rooms enter with them. The body is social before it is symbolic. It carries evidence of where it has been and who else is nearby. That is why the paintings move between portraiture and scene painting. I am interested not only in who someone is, but in what happens around them, what they do with their body and how a room changes the way they can be seen. Available originals from an earlier period A selection of these earlier oil paintings is still available. They are available originals from the archive, not a new release or a replacement for the next collection. The next collection is developing now. These works remain open as a record of the years that made that direction possible. Related sources: - [See available originals](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store) - [Read about the next collection through the studio](https://sketchyshona.substack.com) ### Soweto is happening now Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/soweto-is-happening-now/ Published: 2026-09-14 Summary: I reflect on painting, music and creative exchange in Soweto, from Lebo's Soweto Backpackers to Sawubona Music Jam and Trackside Studios. Topics: Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, public murals, music, youth culture, creative communities, cultural exchange, Countercult Article text: A place that is happening, not only a place that happened I went to Soweto because I wanted to understand the creative life there now. Its history cannot be separated from the place, especially in 2026, fifty years after the Soweto Uprising. But I did not want to look at Soweto as if its culture had already reached a final form. What stayed with me was the movement between history and the present. Music, visual art, nightlife, storytelling and activism were not separate departments. They overlapped through people making things, hosting things and creating places for others to meet. Coming from New York and Berlin, I recognised the energy of a city where culture is built by the people creating it in real time. Finding the city through local artists When I travel, I usually ask local street artists where I should go. That is how I heard about Soweto. The quickest way to reach a real creative community is often to start somewhere locally owned, rather than through a polished guide. I stayed at Lebo's Soweto Backpackers because I had heard that artists were based around it. The location became a starting point for meeting people, hearing recommendations and understanding the city through people already making a life there. Painting at Lebo's I painted a small jazz-inspired mural at Lebo's. It came out of the place, the conversations around it and the history of music in Soweto. I was also thinking about how jazz travels, belonging to a place while making connections across cities. The mural was not a decorative version of Soweto. It was a response to being there, to the people I met and to a site already holding movement, memory and hospitality. Sawubona Music Jam On my first night, Juju Diva brought me to Lucky's Sawubona Music Jam. I met musicians, artists and organisers from the local scene, and the night became one of the defining experiences of the trip. Lucky spoke about building the jam from a living room and garage into what it is now. The van had to be pushed out of the garage whenever the jam needed to happen. Culture was being built with whatever resources were available, through humour, resilience and determination. We also talked about creative exchange, community spaces and the pressure independent cultural spaces face. Berlin, New York and Johannesburg have different histories, but artists in each place know what it means to build something before a stable structure exists to protect it. Trackside Studios and the next connection The next day, I went with people from Lebo's to Trackside Studios to plan the mural and choose a small wall inside the campsite. I stopped at Grayscale in Braamfontein for paint supplies, then spent the afternoon painting a quick mural of a Soweto jazz musician. Later, a community dinner and storytelling night opened a wider conversation about future collaborations and ways of connecting creative communities between Johannesburg, Berlin and New York. Trackside's work reminded me that a creative space is defined not only by equipment or programme, but by whether people can use it to make something, meet each other and imagine a next step. What I brought back I went to South Africa to document local and underground cultures, but the trip changed how I thought about my own work. I became more aware of the relationship between a mark and the place where it appears, and between an artist's individual image and the people who make a cultural setting possible. Soweto made me think about culture as active rather than decorative. It is made through music, murals, conversations, meals, rooms, invitations and the decision to keep showing up. I want to keep building that kind of exchange between Johannesburg, Berlin and New York. Not a polished international identity that removes differences, but real relationships in which the differences remain visible. Related sources: - [Read the In Your Pocket feature](https://www.inyourpocket.com/southafrica/johannesburg/articles/soweto-through-sketchyshonas-eyes) - [Lebo's Soweto Backpackers](https://www.sowetobackpackers.com/) - [Sawubona Music Jam](https://www.instagram.com/sawubona_music_jam/) - [Trackside Studios](https://www.inyourpocket.com/southafrica/johannesburg/venues/trackside-creative) - [Read the In Your Pocket Johannesburg feature](https://www.inyourpocket.com/southafrica/johannesburg/articles/soweto-through-sketchyshonas-eyes) ### What I build when the feed is not enough Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/what-i-build-when-the-feed-is-not-enough/ Published: 2026-09-15 Summary: I am building rooms, records, objects and routes of my own so the work can live beyond a feed, with the time and context that an artist archive needs. Topics: artist archive, culture technology, physical space, Countercult, Sketchy Shona, artist website Article text: The feed is a surface The feed is useful. It can show a drawing to someone in another city, help a collector find a work or let a project travel before I can travel with it. But a feed is still a surface. It is not a studio, archive, room, relationship or cultural memory. I do not want it to become the only place where the work exists. The work needs time, material, context and somewhere to hold what cannot fit into one image. Building a room around the work That is why I keep building spaces and systems alongside the art. The website is not only a portfolio. It arranges paintings, objects, murals, drawings, projects, writing and invitations so they can be understood as parts of one practice. THE FLOOR came from the same need in physical space. It is a room for artists, work, conversations and the conditions around making. Countercult comes from a related question, but it is cultural infrastructure: how can cultural knowledge, independent spaces and local relationships become easier to find and connect to paid work? Technology can return us to the body I am not interested in pretending technology is the enemy of physical work. I use code, databases and digital tools because they can help a practice hold more relationships than one person can hold alone. The question is what the technology is for and who it leaves with more capacity. A digital archive can lead back to a wall, room, piece of furniture, conversation or original work. A public cultural map can help someone find a space they would otherwise miss. The screen should not become the final destination. The work has to leave the screen Paintings still need bodies in front of them. Objects need weight, surface and use. Murals need walls and the people who move past them. A residency needs a room, key, table, person who knows the place and enough time for something unexpected. I want to protect that physical return. I am interested in systems that bring people back to the world with better information, better invitations and more meaningful reasons to meet. The point is not a larger feed. It is a more useful route into the work. Related sources: - [Read Shona Neary's Journal on building Countercult and cultural data](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/journal/building-countercult-data-culture/) ### Painting, furniture and code in one artist practice Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/painting-furniture-code-and-the-refusal-to-stay-in-one-category/ Published: 2026-09-15 Summary: My work moves between paintings, objects, furniture, murals, technology and cultural projects because the questions can travel across materials without losing their centre. Topics: painting, furniture, objects, culture technology, Sketchy Shona, New York, Berlin Article text: Categories are useful until they become instructions Painting is the centre of my practice, but it is not the only language I use. A painting can become a surface, a pattern can become furniture, a drawing can become a room and a room can change the way the work is understood. Those movements do not mean the practice lacks focus. The continuity is in the recurring concerns: bodies, pressure, transformation, pleasure, discomfort, nature, technology and the strange intelligence of materials. Fashion taught me that an image has a body My relationship to fashion was never only about clothes. It was about image, construction, posture, surface and the way a person enters a room. A garment can change how a body is read. Furniture can do something similar to a room. A painting can change the pressure around it. That is why objects and furniture belong in the wider practice. They are not merchandise added after the paintings. They are another way to ask how an image occupies physical space and how a person lives alongside it. Code is another material Code differs from paint, but it is still a material with behaviour, limits and consequences. It can organise an archive, create a route through a body of work or help people find what they need. Used without care, it can also flatten everything into a surface. Building Countercult taught me to think about the infrastructure around culture. Countercult is not a service department of Sketchy Shona. It has its own public purpose and cultural infrastructure. The two practices share an interest in making rooms, relationships and possibilities where something else can happen. One world, several forms The archive should show connections without pretending that a mural, original painting, chair, tattoo, live session and cultural platform are the same thing. They are different rooms in the institution I am building. The point is not to make every category equal. It is to let each form keep its own weight while showing the relationships between them. A practice can be coherent without becoming repetitive. Let the form carry the question I want the next chapters to hold more scale: original works, objects, rooms, public projects, selective commissions and the systems that let the work reach the right people. That does not mean saying yes to every format. It means choosing the form that can carry the question properly. The work is allowed to be physical, commercial, strange, useful, beautiful, difficult and technically built. I am not trying to escape being an artist. I am trying to make that category large enough to describe the work. Related sources: - [See Shona Neary's work across creative culture, technology and business](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/) ### Berlin: the city as a working archive Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/berlin-the-city-as-a-working-archive/ Published: 2026-09-17 Summary: I do not use Berlin as a location tag. I return to its walls, rooms, nights and temporary conditions because they keep changing what the work has to do. Topics: place guide, artist travel guide, Berlin, field notes, public work, street art, THE FLOOR, Sketchy Shona Article text: Berlin is a working condition Berlin is not a backdrop I use to make the work look more interesting. It is a working condition, with its own speed, clubs, artists, ruins, independent rooms and public arguments about who gets to belong where. I have made walls, live drawings, exhibitions, tattoos, installations and studio work here. The city keeps placing the work in situations where it has to meet people before it has fully explained itself. The wall changes the decision Teufelsberg taught me to think about the wall as a public encounter rather than a large canvas. A figure has to hold from a distance, while the smaller marks and changes of colour keep the image active when someone comes close. Paste-ups and street work carry a different pressure. They enter a place without asking the viewer to buy a ticket or know the artist first. The photograph matters because it keeps the conditions of the encounter visible after the wall has changed. Rooms can be temporary and still matter THE FLOOR gave DA SWAMP, Human Cocoon, live tattooing and shared work a room in which to meet. Klunkerkranich gave drawing a public rhythm alongside music and conversation. Life in Progress let painting, skin, paste-ups and movement occupy the same exhibition. Those rooms are not interchangeable venues. Each one changed the work because of who was there, what had already happened in the space and how long the situation could remain open. A guide without a checklist This is not a list of the best places to visit in Berlin. It is a record of the conditions I keep returning to: an open wall, a room with a point of view, a late conversation, an artist making something without waiting for permission to become official. If you want to understand my Berlin, follow the connections between the murals, THE FLOOR, DA SWAMP, the live sessions and the studio. The city is in the work because it has given the work somewhere to happen. Related sources: - [See the Berlin location archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/berlin) - [View the public work archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/public-work) - [Visit THE FLOOR](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/floor) ### Da Nang: drawings, walls and the city around them Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/da-nang-drawings-walls-and-the-city-around-them/ Published: 2026-09-17 Summary: Da Nang gave me a flash language that could move between paper, walls, motorbikes, courtyards and the people around the residency. Topics: place guide, artist travel guide, Da Nang, Vietnam, residency, drawing, mural, field notes, Sketchy Shona Article text: The city entered through the flash sheets Da Nang did not arrive in the work as a scenic background. It came through the things I kept looking at: fish, dogs, chairs, lamps, motorbikes, food, creatures, signs and the way objects gathered around daily life. The flash sheets became a way to hold those observations without turning them into a literal illustration of the city. A drawing could stay strange and personal while still carrying the pressure of the place where it was made. A wall is a social surface The murals changed the speed of the residency. A drawing that had been private could become part of a courtyard, a shared wall or a working space where other people had their own reasons to be present. Painting alongside other people made the image less protected. The wall had to answer to its surroundings, to the people moving around it and to the practical conditions of making work in public. The objects stayed in the language I kept returning to ordinary objects because they already carried relationships. A chair is not only a chair when it belongs to a room, a family, a business or a street. A motorbike is not only a shape when it is part of how a city moves. The flash practice let those objects sit beside animals, bodies and symbols without deciding which category mattered most. That is part of why the Da Nang drawings still move between tattoos, paintings and walls. What I brought back I brought back a larger sense of how a visual language can travel without becoming a logo. The creatures and symbols remained recognisably mine, but the place changed their neighbours, their scale and the situations in which they could appear. I keep Da Nang as one residency project with shared murals, flash drawings and site records. The archive is not a travel diary. It is evidence of what the city allowed the work to become. Related sources: - [Open the Da Nang residency archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/da-nang-residency) - [See the Ink practice](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/ink) ### Anceu: a village as a studio Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/anceu-a-village-as-a-studio/ Published: 2026-09-17 Summary: Anceu asked me to pay attention to what was already there, then let the village alter what could be made, shared and left behind. Topics: place guide, artist travel guide, Anceu, Galicia, residency, rural work, community, field notes, Sketchy Shona Article text: There was nowhere to hide behind density Rural Hackers took me out of Berlin and into Anceu, a small village in Galicia. The change was immediate. There was no city density or visual noise to hide behind. I had to pay attention to what was already there and to the people who would live with whatever I made. The place made time visible. An idea had to develop in relation to a village, not only in relation to my own studio habits. Letting the village alter the work The work moved between an interior mural, village forms, found doors, Rogelio's portrait and local references including Tambor, the village dog. I did not want to bring a portable version of Berlin and install it unchanged. The mural, installation and drawings became a conversation between my visual language and the materials already carrying the village's history. The work could remain mine without pretending the place was neutral. People are part of the record A place-based project is not only about the image that remains on the wall. It is also about the people who make the work possible, the person who recognises a local reference and the community that has to live with the result after the artist leaves. That is why the archive holds process, portraits, found material and finished surfaces together. The relationships are not background information. They are part of what happened. What remains after leaving I keep Anceu as a residency and place-based project, not as a travel anecdote. It records what happens when Sketchy Shona has to answer to somewhere specific. The work remains in the archive as a reminder that a village can be a studio without becoming a stage set. The location did not simply host the work. It changed the conditions of making it. Related sources: - [Open the Rural Hackers archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/rural-hackers-anceu) - [Read the project record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/rural-hackers-goethe-institut-anceu) ### New York: scale, pressure and starting again Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/new-york-scale-pressure-and-starting-again/ Published: 2026-09-17 Summary: New York is part of my history and current working life. I return to it for the pressure, the scale, the ambition and the relationships that keep the work moving. Topics: place guide, artist travel guide, New York, field notes, fine art, fashion, cultural projects, Sketchy Shona Article text: New York is not a location tag New York is part of my biography and current work. I studied fine art there, worked around fashion and culture, showed in the Whitney Museum staff exhibition and built relationships that still shape the wider practice. I do not want the city to function as a location tag added to an artist bio. It is a set of pressures that changed how I think about scale, access, ambition, work and the speed at which a person has to make a decision. The city asks what the work can do New York carries density, competition, money, visibility and a direct relationship to making a living. Those pressures are not always comfortable, but they make the question of usefulness difficult to avoid. A painting has to hold its own space. A collaboration has to have a reason to exist. A public project has to understand the people and systems around it. The city taught me to treat ambition as something that needs structure, not only desire. A practice with more than one scale My New York history moves between original art, fashion, cultural projects, public work and artist-led collaborations. Those experiences did not replace the studio practice. They showed me how an image changes when it enters a body, a room, a brand, a street or a public institution. That movement is still visible in the archive. The work can be intimate and large-scale, personal and public, commercial and strange without losing the same interest in bodies, pressure and transformation. The next connection I want New York to remain a live working ground rather than a finished chapter. The right future connection would be specific: an exhibition, a serious commission, an institution, a cultural room or a collaboration with enough tension to change the work. The point of returning is not to repeat the past. It is to bring the current practice back into a city that already knows how to demand more from an image. Related sources: - [See the New York location archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/new-york) - [Read New York and Berlin](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/new-york-berlin-emerging-artist-practice) - [View selected commissions](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) ### Places I keep returning to Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/places-i-keep-returning-to/ Published: 2026-09-17 Summary: The places in my archive are not interchangeable backdrops. They are working conditions, relationships and sources of pressure that keep changing the practice. Topics: place guide, artist travel guide, field notes, Berlin, New York, Da Nang, Anceu, Johannesburg, Sketchy Shona Article text: A place changes the work before the work begins I have travelled through many places, but I do not want to turn that experience into a collection of location tags. A place matters when it changes the decisions, the materials, the people around the work or the reason for making it. Berlin gave me walls, rooms, nights and a public art context. New York gave me scale, pressure and a long working history. Da Nang gave me objects, flash drawings, shared walls and a different rhythm of exchange. Anceu asked me to answer to a village. Johannesburg showed me culture as something built actively through music, murals, meals and rooms. The work is not a souvenir The point of documenting travel is not to prove that I have been somewhere. It is to keep the relationships and conditions around the work visible. A mural should not erase the wall. A portrait should not turn a person into scenery. A drawing should not pretend the place was only there to provide an image. That is why the archive keeps process, people, objects, finished work and practical conditions together. The place remains part of the record instead of being consumed as a mood. A route through the archive Start with Berlin if you want to see the practice in public: Teufelsberg, street work, DA SWAMP, THE FLOOR and the live sessions. Move to Da Nang to see how a residency can change a visual vocabulary through flash sheets, murals and shared walls. Go to Anceu for the question of scale and responsibility in a village. Go to New York for the longer history of education, work, fashion, culture and ambition. Then return to the individual project records, where each place becomes specific again. What I bring back I bring back images, but images are not the only thing that stays. I bring back a changed sense of what a room can hold, what a public mark can ask of people and how a practice can remain coherent while moving between cities and materials. These guides are an invitation into that wider map. They are not travel advice. They are records of where the work has been tested, interrupted and given another direction. Related sources: - [See the full artist archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/portfolio) - [Read the place guides](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal?topic=place%20guide) ### Culture Is What We Carry Between Places Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/culture-is-what-we-carry-between-places/ Published: 2026-09-28 Summary: I have lived between New York and Berlin and worked in other places. Culture arrives through people, rooms, gestures and what we learn to carry forward. Topics: Sketchy Shona, culture, artist practice, Berlin, New York, social learning, field note Article text: I learn culture by being somewhere I have lived and worked between New York and Berlin, and the places I return to keep changing what I notice. A city is not a mood or a backdrop. I learn from its rooms, streets, sounds, habits, pressures and the ways people make a life inside it. When I remember a place, I do not only remember how it looked. I remember how people moved through it, what they made room for, what they shared, what they kept to themselves and what it took to keep going. Culture arrives through people Music, clothes, food, art, language and objects can carry culture, but none of them explains the whole thing. The mark on a wall is not only an image. There is a person who made it, a place that allowed it, a reason it appeared there and the people who meet it afterwards. That is why I am careful about turning a neighbourhood into a look or a tradition into a reference folder. The visible part is real, but it is not the entire relationship. An artist changes what they carry I take things in, make choices, try forms and leave other things alone. A drawing, painting, tattoo, mural, object or room can hold something I have learned without pretending to stand in for everyone who taught it to me. Making is a way to work with experience, not a claim to own the whole place it came from. Culture keeps moving because people repeat, alter, teach, argue with and share what they have inherited. The work changes as it passes through different hands. Why I keep the conditions in the archive I want the record around the work to keep its people, place and process visible. A photograph should not make the wall disappear. A project page should not turn a collaboration into a solo myth. A place should not be reduced to the image that travels most easily. The archive is part of the practice because it can hold what a finished image cannot: how the work arrived, what changed and which relationships remain connected to it. What culture means to me Culture is what people learn from one another and keep changing together. It matters because it gives us ways to recognize each other, make a life, remember where we have been and imagine what could happen next. When we flatten culture into content, we lose the conditions that produced it. I want the work to stay close to those conditions, even when it travels. Related sources: - [Read Shona Neary’s culture essay](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/journal/culture-is-how-we-learn-to-live-together/) - [Read Countercult’s place-based essay](https://countercult.network/journal/culture-is-local-knowledge/) - [Research on cumulative cultural evolution](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/364/1528/2405/21049/Ratcheting-up-the-ratchet-on-the-evolution-of) ### Shona Neary is Sketchy Shona: my current artist record Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/shona-neary-sketchy-shona-current-artist-record/ Published: 2026-10-02 Summary: I am Shona Neary, known publicly as Sketchy Shona. This is the current record of my artist practice, work, places and routes into the archive. Topics: Shona Neary, Sketchy Shona, artist, Berlin artist, New York artist, Philadelphia artist, original art, artist archive Article text: One artist, two public names I am Shona Neary, known professionally as Sketchy Shona. I studied Fine Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and work between Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia, travelling beyond those bases for projects. I make paintings, drawings, objects, murals, tattoos, installations and public work. I use painting, drawing, murals, installation, tattoos, objects and public work. Those forms have different audiences and conditions. A painting belongs to a particular surface and room; a mural meets people outdoors; a tattoo becomes part of someone’s body. The archive keeps those differences visible while showing how an image can move between them. What the work attends to I paint figures from the bones outward, building them layer by layer. Bodies, hands, faces and ordinary objects can carry pressure, vulnerability, humour or a sense that something familiar has shifted. I am interested in what remains human when systems classify, optimize and mediate the way we live. That question is present in the work, but it does not give every painting one fixed meaning. Material and setting matter to me. Patina can show contact and time; a room changes how an image is encountered; a mark on skin has a different duration from one on canvas. Looking across paintings, drawings, objects and public projects helps me understand those changes without treating the formats as interchangeable. As an image leaves the studio, it meets new conditions. A wall meets people moving through a place, an object enters daily use and an installation changes how a room is experienced. Each shift asks me to think about scale, material and attention in a different way. The artist-owned cultural world I am building holds those forms together while leaving their differences alive. Art practice and Countercult are related, not identical I also founded Countercult, whose core cultural platform is open source. I bring creative culture into contact with technology, business and globalization there, exploring how cultural knowledge is represented, how digital systems shape discovery and how creative work can participate in economic life. My artist-owned cultural world and Countercult grow from a shared attention to lived culture. Through paintings, objects, installations and public work, I make encounters with images and places. Countercult develops the wider systems through which culture can be discovered, shared and valued. Find the record that fits your question The portfolio gathers project and artwork records, including public murals, exhibitions and objects. My About page gives the fuller biography, while the commission page describes work with people, organisations and places. I work from Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia, and travel beyond those bases when a project calls for it. For collecting, the current listings identify available originals; project and exhibition pages record work made in a particular setting. Personally retained work is not for sale. For a commission, send the location, intended setting, form and timing through the commission route. This Journal entry connects the work under both Shona Neary and Sketchy Shona. Related sources: - [Read my biography and artist record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/about) - [Browse the portfolio archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/portfolio) - [See commission formats and process](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Check current available originals](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store) ### Commissioning art in Berlin: paintings, murals and objects Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/commissioning-art-in-berlin-sketchy-shona/ Published: 2026-10-02 Summary: A practical guide for Berlin collectors considering existing originals or a site-specific painting, mural or installation by Shona Neary, known as Sketchy Shona. Topics: Sketchy Shona, Shona Neary, Berlin artist, Berlin art commission, collect original art, painting commission, mural commission, installation Article text: Start by deciding whether you want an existing work or a commission I am Shona Neary, known as Sketchy Shona, and I work between Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia. For Berlin collectors, the first choice is often between an existing original, with its own dimensions and materials, and a commission shaped around a person, room, wall or public setting. My project archive makes it possible to look closely at how the work meets a place. The portfolio brings those routes together: project records show work made for specific settings, and the current listings identify originals available to collect. Choose a form that fits the place For a Berlin home, studio or workplace, a painting, drawing or object can be chosen in relation to the room: its wall dimensions, light, viewing distance and existing materials. Those details help me understand how a new image or object can live there. Share what you want the work to carry and what matters in the room; references can be a starting point for the conversation. A mural or installation brings the street, building and people using the site into the decision. We can discuss the surface, ownership, access, indoor or outdoor conditions and how long the work should remain. Fashion and objects call for their own material and production questions, so the form follows the actual setting. Berlin work records show different kinds of evidence I have returned to Teufelsberg Urban Art Gallery for public-art participation in 2022, 2024 and 2025. One large-scale painting carries a moment from a Berlin Späti rave onto a wall. At that scale, the figure needs to hold from a distance while smaller marks and shifts in colour reward a closer look. The wall and its viewers shape how the image is read. Life in Progress was my first solo exhibition in Berlin. Half Life, a self-portrait, was shown in the DA SWAMP exhibition at THE FLOOR. These records show paintings alongside installation, tattoos and a room of related work. Follow the Teufelsberg and exhibition pages to see how each project belongs to its own Berlin setting. What collecting costs include An available original is listed in euros at its artwork-only price. For delivery to Berlin or another destination, I confirm packing and insured shipping costs separately; customs charges, import duties and tariffs depend on the destination. A personally retained work is not for sale and has no price or purchase enquiry route. The listing and destination together make the collecting costs clear. For a commission, we begin with a free consultation about the idea, site, timing, budget and any travel. Once scope, materials and price are agreed, a 50% deposit confirms the work. The remaining balance is due on completion, and we plan delivery, installation or handover around the agreed site. Bring the practical questions For an original in a Berlin interior, note the room dimensions, light, framing needs and whether you would collect or need insured delivery. For a mural or installation, share the site, surface, access, people who use it and any known permissions. Include your timing and budget so we can discuss a workable scale and form. Browse the portfolio and current original listings, then use the commission page to book a free consultation. I work between Berlin, New York City and Philadelphia and travel for projects; we can plan the travel needed for a particular site as part of the discussion. Related sources: - [See the Teufelsberg public-work record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/teufelsberg) - [Read the Life in Progress exhibition archive](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/life-in-progress) - [See Half Life in the DA SWAMP exhibition](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/da-swamp#half-life) - [Browse portfolio and available originals](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission#originals) - [Read commission details and book a free consultation](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Check current original-art listings](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store) ### Commissioning art in New York: a guide to originals and projects Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/commissioning-art-in-new-york-shona-neary/ Published: 2026-10-02 Summary: How to approach existing originals or a painting, mural or installation commission with Shona Neary, the artist known as Sketchy Shona, whose documented New York work includes a Bushwick mural. Topics: Shona Neary, Sketchy Shona, New York artist, NYC art commission, Brooklyn mural artist, collect original art, painting commission, public art Article text: A New York connection with a documented public-work record I am Shona Neary, known as Sketchy Shona. I studied Fine Art in New York and work between New York City, Berlin and Philadelphia, travelling beyond those bases for projects. I plan each New York project around its location, timing and travel requirements, from the first conversation through delivery or installation. My Bushwick mural for Hispanic Pride Month depicts Carolina, my best friend from high school. The digital sketch shows how I brought her portrait and skateboard into the wall composition; the process and street-view images follow the painting into its orange Bushwick setting. Together, these records show the image changing from drawing to a public wall. Existing art and new commissions are different routes The available-original listings identify work for sale and give dimensions, medium and artwork-only price in euros. Project and exhibition pages preserve works made in particular settings; personally retained work is not for sale, has no public price and is not open to purchase enquiries. A commission is developed around a person, place or purpose. It can be fine art in oil, pastel or drawing, a mural or installation, an object or another idea we discuss. The right format depends on where it will be encountered. A domestic painting, public wall and installation each have different responsibilities, materials and lifespans. What to consider before choosing a format For a painting, note the wall dimensions, viewing distance, light and whether the work will sit in a home, studio, office or another setting. Tell me what you want the image to hold, rather than sending a reference and asking for a copy. For a mural, identify the surface, property owner or decision-maker, audience, access conditions and any permissions or maintenance requirements. For an installation or object, consider circulation, handling, installation and how the work will coexist with people using the space. A practical first conversation can include photographs or a plan, approximate scale, intended dates, budget range and who is involved in approving the work. You do not need to solve every technical detail before getting in touch. These are the questions that help us work out whether a project is feasible and whether it should be a painting, a mural, an installation or something else. How pricing, travel and delivery work An available existing original is priced in euros for the artwork only. Packing, insured shipping, customs charges, import duties and tariffs are additional and depend on destination. I discuss those costs before payment; the artwork price is not a landed total. A bespoke commission has its own price, agreed for its scope and materials, rather than inheriting the price of an existing painting. A free consultation is where we discuss the idea, site, timing, budget and travel. Once we agree scope, materials and price, a 50% deposit confirms the commission; the remaining balance is due on completion. We plan delivery or installation for the site, and account for travel when setting the schedule and scope. A useful first enquiry Tell me where the work would live or be made, what form interests you, approximate dimensions or surface, who uses the space, your timing and budget, and any access or shipping constraints. For New York projects, note whether the site is in a private interior or a public setting and who can approve work there. If you are asking about an existing original, include the listing or artwork name so I can respond to that specific record. The portfolio brings together paintings, murals, objects and installations. The Bushwick page offers a close look at one New York project; for your own enquiry, include the site, image or purpose you want to explore. Related sources: - [Open the Bushwick mural record](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/projects/bushwick-mural) - [Browse the artist portfolio](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/portfolio) - [View portfolio and originals for sale](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission#originals) - [Read commission terms and book a free consultation](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/commission) - [Check current available originals](https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/store) ### The systems around the work Canonical URL: https://countercult.network/sketchyshona/journal/the-systems-around-the-work/ Published: 2026-10-17 Summary: A first-person note on the practical structures around making art, and why they should support the work without deciding what it becomes. Topics: artist practice, culture, systems, creative infrastructure Article text: The part no one sees I grew up in a military family and spent part of my childhood around West Point. That is part of my history, not a qualification and not a template for how other artists should work. It made me notice the systems around daily life: the people, timing, access and practical decisions that make a place function. Making work also has a world around it. A painting needs materials, a place to make it and time to stay with it. A mural or public experience brings other people, permissions, weather, budgets and a site into the picture. These details do not make the work less creative. They affect whether it can exist and how people encounter it. Culture has scale, and it has a life beyond the numbers UNESCO’s 2023 publication Why invest in culture and creativity? estimates that cultural and creative industries account for 3.1% of global GDP and 6.2% of employment. I find those figures useful because they make the size of the sector harder to dismiss. They still cannot describe what a particular image, room, gathering or relationship means to the people who meet it. A system should leave room for authorship I am interested in infrastructure when it gives artists more ways to be found, to meet one another and to take part in paid work without asking them to hand over the meaning of their practice. Open-source tools can be inspected and adapted, but open code does not make private information or artwork free for anyone to take. Consent, context and control still matter. This is one reason I built Countercult alongside my art practice. Countercult is its own network and infrastructure project. Sketchy Shona is where I make and show my work. They inform one another, but they are not the same thing, and a technical system cannot stand in for making art. The practical part is still human In one production situation, an agency needed last-minute help with logistics for an underground ballet. I helped resolve the immediate issue and used Countercult’s local knowledge to find and pitch two runners, one in Berlin and one in Amsterdam. The agency hired both. It was a useful example of people and local context solving a real problem quickly, not proof that every creative situation can be made efficient or predictable. The systems I care about are the ones that support the work and the people around it. They should make room for uncertainty, for an artist changing direction, and for the parts of being human that cannot be reduced to a schedule or a dataset. Related sources: - [UNESCO: Why invest in culture and creativity?](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382965_eng) - [Countercult Journal: the systems culture needs to stay independent](https://countercult.network/journal/creative-work-operational-leadership/) - [Shona Neary: the work between creative vision and delivery](https://countercult.network/shona-neary-portfolio/journal/creative-work-operational-leadership/) - [UNESCO, Why invest in culture and creativity? (2023)](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382965_eng) ## Verified external profiles - [Independent Teufelsberg wall documentation by Vagabundler](https://vagabundler.com/germany/streetart-map-berlin/teufelsberg-shona/) - [Book a Street Artist profile](https://www.bookastreetartist.com/shona-designs) - [Substack](https://sketchyshona.substack.com/) - [LinkedIn studio profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sketchy-shona) - [Shona Neary on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shona-neary-aa7182100) ## Citation guidance Use Sketchy Shona as the current public artist name. Shona.Designs and Shona Designs are former names. Shona Neary is an artist, curator, residency host and coordinator. DA SWAMP is one exhibition, not the name of the practice. THE FLOOR is the Berlin home, studio, project room and ongoing artist residency. Countercult is cultural infrastructure founded by Shona Neary.