About the artist
Shelby Prindaville’s artwork has been exhibited in various venues internationally and throughout the United States, including Madrid, Athens, Buenos Aires, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Baton Rouge, Fort Worth, and Los Angeles, as well as online. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections, and she has been awarded a variety of grants, prizes, and international and domestic residencies. She has been selected as a World Wildlife Fund tour artist, was invited to be the first-ever artist in residence at a veterinary school in the United States (at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine), and has been published in numerous journals, catalogs, and media outlets.
Shelby Prindaville is the Art Department Chair, Director of the Helen Levitt and Eppley Art Galleries, and Associate Professor of Art at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa. She is also President of the Board of Trustees for the Sioux City Art Center.
Prior to her employment at Morningside, Shelby served as the Art Program Director and Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas. She also worked as an Instructor and Gallery Special Projects Coordinator at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while completing her Master of Fine Arts from the interdisciplinary LSU Painting and Drawing Program in 2013. She received her Bachelor of Arts in fine arts with a concentration in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2008.
Her studio practice combines her interests in the sciences and art. This interest extends to her collaboration with LSU Chemistry Professor John A. Pojman, which has led to the development of new polymer clays used in her mixed media reliefs and sculptures.
About the artwork
I am interested in the human role in shaping an ecological balance and create art pieces centered on the beautiful fragility and resilience of the natural world. I want viewers to interact and emotionally connect with my work and for that experience to demonstrate the joy of contemplative engagement with nature as well as provide a taste of the sorrow a disconnect with nature can bring.
I am an interdisciplinary artist combining science and a wide range of art disciplines to better connect with a broad audience. The scientific fields of botany, chemistry, ecology, environmental sciences and ethics, horticulture, materials science, and zoology are all particularly relevant to my work. My artwork has a delicacy and intimacy that imparts a sense of magic realism and objecthood. My subjects are typically removed from strictly representational habitats and isolated in a space that allows room for viewer narratives while referencing the discovery and artifactual documentation of taxonomic illustrations and specimens.