We put so much energy into documenting our friends, we take pictures of them, we follow what they do, and their stories are more interesting than any banal afternoon television show. People are more interesting than they give themselves credit for. In So I've Been Told Hardy narrates their stories, drawing their asides, their inside jokes, cautionary tales, secrets, lies, and recipes. Through ink drawings, screen-printing, paintings, and embroidery she creates imagery from her imagination and immediate surroundings. Her practice is influenced by nature books, children's stories, her friends, ornamental art, prairie churches, Quaker Art, Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs, and the art of the order of Ursuline Nuns of Quebec. At one point Hardy takes a visual inventory of the events taking place on any given night. She uses her own personal mythos of nighttime as her guidelines; the park you should not walk through alone and the northern lights you should never whistle at... and what happens when you do. This book collects a number of her recent book projects, including Jerry Springer Characters, So I've Been Told, At Night, and The Very Very Very Very Last Day. Mythical lake creatures, games, bullies, house fires and drownings all become part of her always evolving personal folklore.

Maryanna Hardy has worked as an artist, illustrator and screen printer and has published her work in publications nationally and internationally. She has designed countless gig posters and chapbooks of her drawings, built and ran a screen–printing shop in Montreal, and has painted public murals in Montreal and Toronto. She has most recently exhibited her work through Gallery Pangee and Gallery Youn in Montreal. In 2009 and 2010 she collaborated with the ypf Collective on their large-scale installation at the Osheaga International Music Festival in Montreal. In November 2010, she published a book of her drawings with Conundrum Press called So I’ve Been Told. The book was short-listed for Montreal Expozine’s 2010 Best Canadian Book and was also short-listed for a Doug Wright award for Best Avant-Garde Comic Book. She lives in Montreal.

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