Loovlinnak Creative City Artist Residency
I was able to put the two ENSV stationery paintings (Submerged Memory and The New Collective) into my solo show Textiles and Territories at the Pärnu Keskraamatukogu (Central Library) Gallery before the exhibition ended!
Here are a few more images of the final show installation and some of my viewers. Being able to exhibit that final painting The New Collective led to a really cool private tour of some of Pärnu KEK’s buildings, so that’ll be covered in my next post!
Estonia has one of the top ten bogs in the world at Soomaa National Park. I knew I wanted to see it, but I also figured I’d need a guide. There’s a company that does guided tours there, but they don’t do them for solo travelers. Knowing that, Marko offered to go canoeing with me if I was already going to go! This was very kind of him and a win-win for us both, I think though obviously more of a win for me - he got a free canoe ride (though he paid in gas and time to get us both there!), and I paid less than it would have cost if I had even managed to join an existing tour (and as far as I know, there were no existing tours) and also received a personal guided tour from him.
We canoed for two hours down the river, which was really fun! (About six hours later, my arms were really feeling it as I’ve pretty exclusively been walking for workouts here.) After the canoeing, I successfully petitioned to do a short bog hike as I really, really, really wanted to see wild sundews.
The bog was beautiful. Folks here often call bogs “green deserts,” as they are hostile to quite a lot of life - but I thought Soomaa’s bogs were otherworldly and had a variety of plant species to admire, as well as insects and some small lizards. (Presumably there’s more fauna, but that’s what I saw!)
The wild sundews were present, as promised! Sundews are relatively small on the size hierarchy of plants, so to get good photos you want to get close. Marko took some pictures of me again; I usually travel solo, particularly when on research trips, so I really appreciate having some images documenting my work process!
One of my consistent practices when traveling abroad is seeking out arts and flea markets, antique stores, vintage shops, and secondhand dealers. This has become part of my research methodology: an opportunity to encounter reference material, regional craft traditions, and occasionally, nontraditional media or substrates that find their way into the work. While I walk out of most places empty-handed, that's fine; the practice is cumulative.
On my second-to-last weekend in Pärnu, I came across an unbranded antique shop that doesn't appear on Google Maps and opens only when the owner feels like it and puts out a sign on the street. Inside, I found a small cache of printed stationery from the Soviet occupation period, issued under the ENSV, the Eesti Nõukogude Sotsialistlik Vabariik, or Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most of the material was too damaged for my purposes, or carried handwriting and other visual noise that would compete with the work. A few pieces, however, were relatively clean.
The surface is extraordinarily loaded. It's also materially demanding: decades-old printed, coated cardstock that requires careful handling and preparation. I purchased the few that might suit my purposes and got to work.
For this first piece, I inverted the cardstock and painted a split-level waterline view of the Baltic Sea directly over the now upside-down state emblem and its slogan. The sinking emblem remains visible, and traces of the communist motto persist in the lower register: Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege! The standard English translation is "Workers of the world, unite!" though a more literal rendering would be "Proletarians of all lands, unite!"
Above the sea, a black-headed gull scans the surface below. In two earlier paintings from this residency, black-headed gulls appear as drone stand-ins, complete with stylized laser beams that complement their substrates’ perforations. Here, that same subject returns, but without overt weaponry.
This is Submerged Memory, acrylic on occupied Estonian printed cardstock from 1974, 11.38x8.2”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville's painting of a black-headed gull flying over the Baltic Sea with an inverted, sinking ENSV state emblem and motto submerged in the water.
My posts about my artwork necessarily are created after I finish them, and frequently more time passes to allow me to properly photograph and color correct the image, because I’m deciding between title options, in order to space my posts out a bit instead of posting in clumps… which is all to say that I actually managed to finish my first five paintings by June 17, even though they weren’t all online yet.
On June 18, residency director Taje Tross asked the Pärnu Keskraamatukogu (Central Library) if they would be willing to host an exhibition of my work sometime before I left, and I assumed they’d be considering a shorter show toward the end of the month - but instead they graciously agreed and asked that I show up the next day to install such that my exhibition ran from June 19-June 30! What luck: this is one of the longest international shows I’ve had as a part of a residency, and definitely the earliest. I am so appreciative I was given the opportunity to share my artwork in such a public gallery for so long (40% of the residency period!).
I brought all five finished paintings, along with a bunch of my greeting cards, and was given a prime set of exhibition tables with protective covers! As I finished more paintings during the show’s duration, I brought them in as well - that’ll be covered in another future post. I set up the show in their first floor gallery, and then returned to the residency to send off my exhibition information which I’m providing below.
Textiles and Territories
by Shelby Prindaville (USA)
This exhibition brings together paintings exploring Estonian ecology, domestic craft, folklore, and geopolitics. Lace, felt, and jacquard trim carry the warmth and care of traditional women's work. Set against that softness, perfokaart (Soviet-era punch cards) and a repurposed crochet panel become surfaces for gulls recast as drones, a collision between domestic inheritance and the machinery of surveillance and war.
I was also able to swing by again shortly after installation with my new friend and nature guide Marko Poolamets on our way out of town to Soomaa National Park, and library director Krista Visas was checking it out as well! She was so warm and professional - she was pleased with the installation and happy to hear I had already sent her my show information. She sprang into action by putting it on social media immediately: their website homepage, news page, Facebook and Facebook stories were all updated the same day. It was also posted on the Tana Parnus events page and the Pärnu Postimees. Below are some screenshots of that publicity! You can click on any of the images below to see them larger.
Next, some exhibition shots:
A companion to Surveillance, this work casts black-headed gulls as drones above a sea built from lace- and felt-placemat stencils and stamps. To evoke the stark visual language of USSR propaganda, the composition relies on a limited color palette and flat, simplified forms. The painted red laser beams begin as perfokaart stencils and then scale progressively toward the panel's edges. The substrate is a crochet base panel used for bags and accessories; ironically, the perforations in the panel are laser cut. Through its use of domestic textile imagery and substrate, the piece serves as a bridge between my Soviet occupation series and my ongoing explorations of Estonian craft traditions.
The title of this piece comes directly from a USSR propaganda poster from 1953.
This is Vigilance Is Our Weapon, acrylic, lace and perfokaart stenciling, and felt stamping on crochet base panel, 11.8x11.8x.125”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville's gulls-as-drones painting on crochet base panel.
I took a departure from my textile mixed-media paintings for this piece. When I arrived at Loovlinnak Creative City Artist Residency, directors Al Padrok and Taje Tross generously gave me access to their tools and supplies, including several stacks of paper. Most of it was unremarkable: construction paper, printer paper, and graph paper. But one small stack caught my eye immediately. I could tell it was old and somehow related to typewriters or early computers, and when I asked, I learned it dated to the Soviet occupation. I adopted all of it, just four sheets, one of which had some math scribbled across it in pen.
Research revealed that it is Soviet-era perfokaart: stiff punch cards with holes in specific positions that fed instructions and data into mainframe computers before modern digital storage existed. From the 1970s through the 1980s, Soviet-bloc computing relied heavily on this technology, running the economic planning, industrial control, and record-keeping systems of the USSR, including in occupied Estonia.
I'd already been planning work that referenced Soviet propaganda posters, so the cards were a natural substrate. I cast a black-headed gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) as a drone after photographing many of them in flight. The species' limited, high-contrast palette and missile-like profile suited the graphic style of Soviet propaganda posters.
I sketched a range of compositions that played off the perfokaart's holes and contours while keeping that propaganda energy, and landed on a gull flying high, firing a dotted laser beam down into the punched border. I used the scribbled-on card as a stencil for the laser dots. I kept the first as-is, and then scaled the rest up so the beam widens from a point near the gull into an even band.
This is Surveillance, acrylic on Soviet-era perfokaart (punch card) c. 1978, 8.2x11.75”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville's painting of a gull cast as a drone on Soviet-era perfokaart.
After my excursions on my nature and birding tour with Marko Poolamets and my trip to the Applied Arts Fair in Riga, I stayed in Pärnu for the next couple of weeks. While that meant a lot of studio time, it also meant a lot of long walks exploring everything Pärnu has to offer - which is a lot!
On the touristic side, Pärnu’s city symbol is the elephant, and there are concrete elephants strewn throughout the parks and roundabouts, and a large elephant slide is in the sea. There is a quaint Old Town, filled with souvenir stores, fashion shops, and restaurants. My favorite restaurant is a little vegan cafe called Liana Kohvik, but there are a lot of other nice options! There are also multiple malls, where you can get groceries, high end clothing, restaurant meals, and so forth. There are quite a few retailers outside of Old Town, including fabric stores, outlets, and secondhand and vintage shops.
There’s also a lot of beautiful nature! My most scenic walk is is an approximately 5 mile loop through parks and residential neighborhoods down to the protected meadow, out to the beach, along the beach until it ends at the jetty, and then back up and through a park with a sculpture walk. There is always some wildlife to enjoy on that walk, including frogs, birds, and insects. I also really like walking along and across the river.
After almost three weeks and while doing a deep dive online, I discovered an artists’ guild that I hadn’t yet found in Old Town, and I was so confused - but when I went to it, I discovered why: they’ve closed off the whole street for construction for the whole month! With determination, I found an alternate route through back alleys and was pleased I did - it’s got a lot of great artists. There are other arts organizations here as well including the City Gallery and Artists’ House, and the Museum of New Art.
You can click into any of these cropped thumbnails to see the whole, larger images! They’re a mishmash of everything I mentioned above and some extras, like my favorite tree and the cat who demanded a lot of pets while I was eating vegan sushi.
I’ve been painting red flowers lately, and I intentionally chose to continue that trend since I was building around a component I planned to use from the start: a jacquard folk pattern trim I picked up at Karnaluks OÜ in Tallinn. Once I saw a stand of vivid tulips, the rest of the composition came together..
The process differed from Between Worlds. Here, I painted the floater panel and tulips first, then laid down plastic and painted the lace pattern on top of it. After removing both those layers, I worked through a wide range of compositional options before settling on this angled, mirrored lace overlay. From there I secured the lace, added the trim, then cleaned up and secured the back. This was the second piece I started, but the third to finish! The delay was due to the sequential steps I needed to complete, each of which involved drying/curing periods.
Iconographically, tulips function as shields, threshold filters, and barriers across multiple traditions, a symbolism rooted in their nyctinasty: they close their petals tightly at night or on cloudy days, sealing their core away from cold, damp, and nocturnal threats. That self-protective habit is part of why tulips are believed to draw in positive energy while keeping poverty, bad luck, and hostility from crossing into the home, and why they carry associations of safety within oppressive environments. The lace adds a further veil over the tulips, while the mirrored, overlapping composition contributes a sense of movement and dissonance.
The outer border carries its own layer of meaning: it is a traditional Baltic woven band steeped in regional folklore and protective symbolism. Its color scheme has historically represented life, fire, and an active shield against negative energy. The pattern combines two ancient Baltic symbols: the Cross of Māra, tied to the Latvian goddess of earth and home and read as a sign of grounding and stability, and the hourglass motif, which represents the rhythm of time and the meeting point of the spiritual and physical worlds.
This is Woven Thresholds, acrylic, lace, and jacquard trim on wooden floater panel, 14x11x.5”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville’s mixed media lace painting of tulips on a floater panel with Baltic jacquard trim.
Wool is ubiquitous here in the Nordic-Baltic region, appearing in many forms: knitted, crocheted, and felted into clothing, mittens, and gloves; accessories like hats, necklaces, and pins; and home goods like placemats, blankets, and children's stuffed animals.
When I came across a felt letter board at a vintage shop in Pärnu, it spoke to me as a viable substrate. I wanted to incorporate wool in some way into my Estonian body of work given its regional importance, and I also liked the idea of converting a familiar mechanism for rigid text-based communication into artwork that through removal of its frame, rotation, and incorporation of organic form brings new associations.
This second finished mixed media painting depicts a rook (Corvus frugilegus). A member of the corvid family (which also includes crows, ravens, and jackdaws), rooks forage on arable land and nest close to farms and villages.
This is Sower’s Shadow, acrylic, molding paste, and matte medium on felt letter board, 11x14.9x.4”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville's painting of a rook on a felt letter board.
My first finished mixed media painting in Estonia depicts a white stork (Ciconia ciconia).
The substrate is antique lace over wood panel. My process involved attaching the lace to the panel, painting the portrait, removing the lace and altering the coloration of the wood panel surface, and then meticulously re-registering and attaching the lace back on top and sealing it down.
These birds are embedded in Estonian rural life: they're associated with summer farms and considered good luck omens. Storks are also important in folklore, as they accompany souls to the underworld and bring newborns into the world as a part of a cycle of death and rebirth in Finno-Ugric mythology.
This is Between Worlds, acrylic and antique lace on wood panel, 14x14x1.5”, 2026.
Shelby Prindaville's mixed media lace painting of a white stork.
I flew into Helsinki, Finland; when I was looking at my flights, I saw they all routed through Helsinki to Tallinn. Since I knew I wanted to visit it during my stay, I figured I’d save on time and ferry costs if I just landed in Helsinki to begin with and then ferried down to Tallinn after a couple of days.
In Helsinki, I visited two different museums (the Architecture and Design Museum and Amos Rex), Temppeliaukio Church, and checked out Hietalahti flea market, Market Square, Old Market Hall), and the Design District. I was lucky enough to get to visit Amos Rex with a former student of mine who was also in Helsinki, so that was quite cool! As I was seeing all the arts and crafts, I noted how much knitting, crocheting, fiber arts, fabrics, and fashion are a part of the design landscape here - particularly that of women. I decided I want to lean into that for my own artwork.
Some general takeaways from Helsinki - the downtown and all associated destinations felt more contained and smaller than I anticipated. There is pretty clearly a decent vegan and vegetarian scene. The tram system is really nice. For whatever reason, Helsinki is like Japan wherein they give you the smallest of cups even for water, so you have to ask for refills constantly. Or you just outright have to pay for water, and even then it’s a tiny bottle. I much prefer the US’s large glass of free tap water approach.
After I was done touring Helsinki, I took the Tallink ferry down from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. The ferry was absolutely enormous, and fortunately it did not set off any significant motion sickness. Once in Tallinn, I hauled my luggage from the port terminal to my hotel and set off on an evening walking loop of the Old Town. Note the seagull-man standoff; they were arguing about whose dinner it was that the man was trying to consume.
The next morning, I headed to Karnaluks OÜ to check out fabric and ribbon options, and had lunch in Tallinn before catching a bus down to Pärnu. After I arrived, I met with the residency directors Taje Tross and Al Paldrok, and they showed me the ins and outs of the residency and nearby neighborhood. I popped out to grab some groceries and then met up for dinner with Marko Poolamets, a Renaissance man. Amongst his many professions, he serves as a nature photographer and tour guide; I had booked the next day with him and his gear. He is also a university professor of marketing, an oral history interviewer, sits on the board of two museums, does environmental science work…
The next morning, Marko and I woke up quite early and went out for a long, delightful day of mostly birding (we were open to other species too, but the birds are plentiful here!). It was lovely to work with him and to get to borrow his gear, including his spotting scope with phone attachment. We spent a full twelve hours touring around a chunk of western Estonia including Matsalu and Haapsalu.
Then the rest of that first week I spent in the studio!
I’m excited to share that I will be attending the Loovlinnak Creative City Artist Residency in Pärnu, Estonia this summer for a month-long stay in June 2026! This will be my first time in the Baltics, and I’m excited to experience and document the environment and atmosphere in and around the “summer capital of Estonia.”
As always, I’ll try to get some Estonian under my belt before I go. However, there are no local classes in Estonian nor is it even available on Duolingo, and it’s a language family with which I’m unfamiliar (Finnic, a division of Finno-Ugric). I imagine I’m not going to get very far with this one, but I’ll do what I can!
