Jillian McDonald works in video, drawing, and performance, referencing horror film, ecological holocaust, haunted landscapes, and paranormal events. At Big&Small/ Casual, she is showing her large wall piece The Birds (After Audubon and Hitchcock), which has recently migrated from a major survey show at Philip J. Steele Gallery, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver, CO. AND, just in time for Halloween, selections from a new series of drawings of Horror Film Houses. The show will run through two DUMBO First Thursday events: at the second, November 7, there will be a screening of video works.

McDonald achieves a perfect equilibrium between horror and humor, with a shimmering of supernatural charm that enables her to coax whole villages of ordinary people to appear in extraordinary outfits, in inclement weather, to participate in her haunting films. Her drawings are charming too - with a delicacy that provides a perfect foil for their darker content. The gallery's long wall will be filled with watercolor drawings of all the birds of Audubon, gathered in an angry swarm that hovers off the wall.

Jillian McDonald BIO in brief: Jillian McDonald is a Canadian artist who lives in Brooklyn and dreams of the North. Solo shows and projects include the Esker Foundation in Calgary, Air Circulation and Moti Hasson in New York, The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Centre Clark in Montréal, and Hallwalls in Buffalo. Her work was featured in group exhibitions and festivals at The Chelsea Museum and The Whitney Museum's Artport in New York, The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Germany, The International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Venezuela, The Sundance Film Festival in Utah, La Biennale de Montréal, and the Centre d'Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France. A feature length radio documentary by Paul Kennedy on CBC's IDEAS profiles her work, which has also been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Border Crossings, and Canadian Art. Critical discussion appears in books including The Transatlantic Zombie (2015), by Sarah Juliet Lauro and Deconstructing Brad Pitt (2014), edited by Christopher Schaberg. McDonald has received grants and commissions from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts, Turbulence, The Verizon Foundation, and The New York State Council on the Arts, The Experimental Television Center, and Pace University. She has attended residencies as far apart as The Headlands Center for the Arts in California and the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard