Gallery 103

New Challenge-Based Artwork: Construct

Once again interrupting my Japanese posts to remind you that the invitational You Want a Piece of Me? exhibition which I previously posted about here ends on August 17, 2025, so due to the gallery’s open hours you have two more dates left in which to stop by! I’ll get more into that below, but first, let’s do a deep dive into what I did.

This show asked artists to create art using a jigsaw puzzle, or puzzle pieces, as part of the art - and to leave at least some portion of original puzzle visible. You may recall that last year we did a similar challenge using board games, and here is what I did for that Advance to Gogh show in 2024!

For You Want a Piece of Me?, I needed to recycle puzzles - but I don’t own any, so I stopped by a thrift store and perused their offerings. I ended up buying three puzzles, mostly based on the differing scale of the pieces. I hadn’t decided what to do yet, but I figured owning these puzzles was a good first step. They were, in order of scale: L.O.L.Surprise! Floor Puzzle [large pieces], Milton Bradley lambs puzzle [medium pieces, 1 original piece held in an octopus tentacle], Milton Bradley Big Ben waterfall puzzle [small pieces, 1 original piece held in an octopus tentacle].

I pondered what I wanted to do with them for some time, as I wanted to make something that was still my own but that also satisfied the challenge parameters. I eventually decided I’d make a sort of topography out of the puzzles. This required actually building them, which for the 1000 piece puzzle took far longer than I wanted it to; I ended up building the other two easily but only assembling a few sections of the Milton Bradley Big Ben waterfall puzzle until I had enough connected material to satisfy my needs.

Then I built up a patchwork foundation, purposefully rejecting any edge pieces as I wanted the sculpture to communicate growth potential along its full border. After I glued it together and somewhat leveled its base, I then sculpted an octopus atop it. I formed the octopus out of QCC, clutching a mid-sized puzzle piece in one of its tentacles and a small piece in another. I also added some sand ridges. After curing, I painted the whole sculpture! Here are some progress pictures:

And here’s the finished piece! This is Construct, acrylic, QuickCure Clay, glue, and puzzle pieces, 16x25.67x3.25", 2025.

If you want to see Construct and the other Gallery 103 You Want a Piece of Me? entries in person, you can stop by either tomorrow (Saturday, August 9th) or next Saturday, August 16th between 10am and 1pm. Gallery 103 is located on the ground floor of the Ho-Chunk Centre located at 600 4th St, Sioux City, IA 51101.

Upcoming: You Want a Piece of Me? Exhibition

I’m interrupting my Japanese posts (which will continue!) to share that the Summer 2025 ArtWalk is on Thursday, July 10, 2025, starting at 5:30pm at the Sioux City Art Center in Sioux City, IA. Visitors can walk from there to Gallery 103, 3Rivers Art Gallery, ArtSUX, and Vangarde Arts. At each venue, visitors will see artworks that follow the theme: You Want a Piece of Me? Over 30 local artists (including me!) have created art using a jigsaw puzzle, or puzzle pieces, as part of the art.

The Sioux City Journal published a cover article titled "Putting It Together" about the event and exhibition on Monday, June 30th with some flattering descriptions and a sneak peek detail of my submission which will be at Gallery 103. To respect the SCJ paywall, I'll just include an image of the part of the article that's about me! (You can click on it to expand the image if you’d like.)

Every location will offer a chance to see our art community's creativity, and snacks and beverages, too. If you want, you will also be able to use your phone and a posted QR code to vote for your favorite artwork! The First Place winner of the People's Choice Award will receive a fine-art wood-crafted jigsaw puzzle from Liberty Puzzles in Boulder Colorado. The Second Place winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to a class at the SCAC.

After the reception is over, I’ll share my piece in its entirety for those of you who can’t make it to the ArtWalk!

Advance to Gogh Show is Up - With My Scra-baa Junior Piece!

KTIV chose to use footage of me looking at artwork to illustrate their article about the Advance to Gogh event.

Just a reminder that I’m participating in a large group exhibition of over 40 Siouxland artists: Advance to Gogh. The opening artwalk receptions for this event (held at the Sioux City Art Center, Gallery 103, Three Rivers Gallery, Art SUX, and Vangarde Arts) was on Thursday, July 11th. I’m unclear on exactly when each of the participating venues will take down the show, but I believe it’s up at least through mid-August.

To the right, you can see an image of me looking at some of the exhibited artworks which was published by KTIV, and if you check the article and video out there’s more footage of me at the reception as well as their own event description and interviews.

In case you can’t make it, though, I’d like to share with you some images of what I did! In the random lottery, I drew the gameboard Scrabble Junior.

The original Scrabble Junior game board.

I decided to keep the illustration and prompt for “sheep” and then painted over all the rest of the illustrations and prompts, color matching with paint to “restore” the rest of the board to a clean, new appearance. Next, I painted a lamb at the base, added the words “& Shelby” to the wordmark, and carefully redrew the grid lines with marker.

Shelby Prindaville's repainted and drawn-over game board.

Finally, I added words for sheep in many languages to illustrate how one plays Scra-baa Junior!

This is Scra-baa Junior (“A ewe-nique edition!”), mixed media including acrylic, marker, varnish, and glue on Scrabble Junior game board with game tiles, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's finished "Scra-baa Junior" artwork.

Upcoming: Advance to Gogh Exhibition with People's Choice Award

The Advance to Gogh flyer for participating artists, designed by Jean-Guy Richard!

My amazing friend and artist Terri McGaffin has organized the Advance to Gogh exhibition taking place at multiple galleries in downtown Sioux City, and she and Gallery 103 invited me to participate!

51 artists including me brought game boards (and some included game pieces and boxes) to the lottery selection on April 6th. I drew #43, which was Scrabble Junior!

I’m looking forward to the opening artwalk on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 5:30pm beginning at the Sioux City Art Center and proceeding to visit all of the included venues:

Sioux City Art Center
Gallery 103
Three Rivers Gallery
Art SUX
Vangarde Arts

There will also be a People’s Choice Award with online voting, so stay tuned as I share more information about that as it becomes available! If you want to visit Gallery 103, it’s located on the ground floor of the Ho-Chunk Centre at 600 4th St, Sioux City, IA 51101.

I have to commend Terri - organizing such a big event across multiple galleries and organizations is a real labor of love and she’s doing a fantastic job with it.