Louisiana State University
The Advocate just published this feature on the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Dean and his vision for the future, which of course includes founding the artist residency I was the first to complete last year! It includes one of my paintings as well (see my screenshot to the right).
Louisiana State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine just launched a new magazine, titled UPROAR. For its inaugural Spring 2023 issue, my painting Wild Card is on the cover and a feature story on my trailblazing artist residency is inside! Here’s a digital version to check out, with some screenshots included below. Hopefully I’ll receive contributor’s copies in the mail soon!
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s inaugural Spring 2023 issue of UPROAR Magazine has cover artwork by Shelby Prindaville as well as a feature story on her trailblazing artist residency.
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s inaugural Spring 2023 issue of UPROAR Magazine includes a feature story on Shelby Prindaville’s trailblazing artist residency.
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s inaugural Spring 2023 issue of UPROAR Magazine includes a feature story on Shelby Prindaville’s trailblazing artist residency.
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s inaugural Spring 2023 issue of UPROAR Magazine includes a feature story on Shelby Prindaville’s trailblazing artist residency.
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s inaugural Spring 2023 issue of UPROAR Magazine includes Shelby Prindaville’s cover artwork and a feature story on her trailblazing artist residency.
Over that first weekend, I attended the Baton Rouge Bromeliad Society Show & sale, went to a Beatles cover band concert by the Remnants (they did play one CCR song, which is more my jam), listened to the artists’ talks for the Baton Rouge Gallery’s current four-person exhibition, spent some time in my host Rob’s studio (mine still hadn’t been made available to me yet) and took a 4.5 mile walk around University Lake to try out my new camera!
Let me back up. After I agreed to take on this residency, I applied for and was awarded a Morningside University Ver Steeg Faculty Scholarship Grant to help cover associated costs. These include the mundane, like mileage, but also the exciting: a new camera and larger substrates than I have been typically using as well as more paint/mediums.
My old camera is a Sony RX100 II, and I adore it. However, it is eight years old and it’s having ever-more-serious issues; when I wrote the grant application a couple of months ago, I shared that “it is having problems focusing, retracting its lens, and opening and closing its automatic lens cover.” However, it has now also factory-reset itself and then later during a photoshoot the screen showing the previous photo wouldn’t clear and the camera behaved as though I was taking a new photo of the previous photo including trying to adjust focus. It’s not dead yet, but its reliability is heavily faltering.
Eight years is a significantly-above-average lifespan for a digital point-and-shoot camera, and I am a heavy and hard user; this camera has been to the Amazon rainforest, Iceland, and everywhere else I’ve been in the past eight years, and it has put up with internal condensation, ants, and all sorts of environmental conditions. My previous two cameras maybe averaged three years each? So I have a lot of respect for the Sony RX100 series.
My new camera is therefore the Sony RX100 VII. On my test-drive walk around the lake, I took photos in shade, in light, of still objects, of animals, from close range and at distance. Some differences I noted pretty quickly: the zoom appears to be better, and there’s a forced-focus feature. Much like on a cell phone, you can press on the large glass touchscreen view on the back of the camera and force the focus. At first, I was absolutely in love with this feature. I still think I’d elect to have it, but there is a downside; any time you touch the back glass, you’ll set it - even if you don’t mean to touch it at all. Then you have to figure out that it’s been set, and at that point you will need to manually clear it.
When I returned to the vet school on Monday, I was given the keys to the kingdom: my badge which allows me access to my studio as well as all other gated-off areas not for public access, and the door key to the studio itself (a temporarily converted conference room). This week I also met with an epidemiologist specializing in mosquito-borne viruses, wildlife medicine, and integrative medicine. I visited the clinical skills laboratory and the histology labs, spent a bit of time in the farm animal and equine areas, got to watch a red-shouldered hawk release, and began to delve into my studio practice.
In addition, I went out to dinner one evening with my former graduate school professor and mentor Kelli Scott Kelley, and then we took in a jazz concert afterwards!
Also a big thanks to Sandy Sarr, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s Communications Coordinator and my primary point of contact, for documenting my residency so well. I rarely get so many good photos of myself in action!
I have extremely exciting news - I have been invited to be the inaugural artist in residence at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine this summer 2022! This brand new program is the first artist residency at a veterinary school in the United States, and it’s a huge honor to be asked to set the tone. I’ll be completing a two-month residency in June and July, with an exhibition at the end of July as well as a public lecture sponsored by the LSU School of Art.
Below is a screenshot of the email announcement sent out to LSU, and you can check out their webpage about it here.
Recently, I was invited by my mentor and former professor Kelli Kelley to guest lecture via Zoom in Louisiana State University’s ART 4889 Advanced Drawing Workshop! It was fun to get a chance to catch up with Kelli and to virtually meet LSU art upperclassmen and graduate students.
Sorry for the slight gap in posts - it's been a very busy couple of weeks! I did want to pop in and let you know that tomorrow afternoon is the reception for our latest guest artist, Assistant Professor of Art Hannah March Sanders of Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. Hannah is a fiber artist and printmaker often working in collaboration with her husband, and I am very excited about her exhibition! Here's the press release for her exhibition, if you'd like more details!
I also neglected to highlight our previous guest artist, so I'll do that now as well. Illinois painter Scott Thomas Arthur exhibited in USM's Goppert Gallery from September 9th through the 30th. His press release is here.
I met both of these talented artists while in graduate school at LSU, and was very excited when they both agreed to exhibit particularly because both were willing to drive over to Leavenworth and actually be present for the reception as well as guest lecture my Portfolio Seminar class. This allows students and reception attendees the ability to really connect with the artists and their artwork in a way that they just can't when they only have access to the artwork.
This was a nice surprise: recently the Louisiana State University College of Art & Design contacted me requesting to write up an Alumni Spotlight on me. Even as massive flooding was happening in the region, the lovely Communications Manager Angela Harwood wrote up this article entitled "Alumni Spotlight: Shelby Prindaville, MFA 2013" to be permanently available online but also to be included in their monthly e-newsletter Quad Mail which is distributed to over 5,000 alumni, friends, and media contacts.
Here at USM, we had the 2015 Art Major Project focused on 3P Quick Cure Clay. Now, John's getting to co-teach a whole course at LSU with it! Here's the article written about this neat class in The Daily Reveille.
