artist in residence

Arts Itoya Painting Progress Pics!

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I often get asked about my studio practice and processes, so I like to share some photos of how my artwork develops! Here are progress images from my Arts Itoya residency in Japan. Note that I do not take the time to precisely color adjust progress photos, and they are often taken in poor lighting conditions (late at night) and sometimes at angles. I also can forget to pause to take pictures when I’m in a rush!

First, here’s Duality:

Next, Pursuit (Ichi-go Ichi-e):

Then we have Lifelong Renter:

Shingling:

Messenger:

And finally, Fleeting:

Arts Itoya Painting 6: Fleeting

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I had mostly finished this painting in time to exhibit it at Arts Itoya, but I knew I wanted to work back into it before declaring it actually complete. Once I returned home from Japan, got past the jet lag, and had a bit of time remaining before the school year started, I tweaked a number of areas until I was truly happy with the resulting piece.

This is Fleeting, acrylic on decorative Japanese stationery, 10.7x10.7”, 2024. It depicts a male crimson marsh glider (Trithemis aurora), also called a crimson dropwing, in flight above water.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a male crimson marsh glider.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a male crimson marsh glider.

Arts Itoya Painting 5: Messenger

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My fifth painting is of a sika deer (Cervus nippon), painted atop a decorative camellia metal leaf washi paper. I applied the paint atop the gilding in a thin, translucent layer so that the metal leaf is still visible. In areas where the paint colors are similar to that of the metal, it’s difficult to see much difference head-on - but in darker coloration spots, you can discern it. However, if you stand at an angle or due to the light environment when reflections are apparent, the gilded decoration is visible throughout the whole painting. Below are two photos of the same painting, visually demonstrating what I describe above!

I encountered wild sika deer in Yakushima (the subspecies C. nippon yakushimae) and in Nara as well as saw them in zoos in Fukuoka and Yamanashi City. They are famous in Nara, as more than 1,200 roam freely around Nara Park and the grounds of several temples and shrines due to the deer serving as sacred messengers to the gods in the Shinto religion.

This is Messenger, acrylic on gilded washi mulberry paper, 26x18”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a sika deer on gilded washi paper.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a sika deer on gilded washi paper, with the metal leaf visible throughout.

Arts Itoya Painting 4: Shingling

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My fourth painting is of a shingling plant I documented in Yakushima, in this case Ficus pumila. Ficus pumila is a native species in Japan (and other East Asian countries). I’m always attracted to epiphytic shingling plants (plants that climb up trees or rocks vertically such that their leaves look like lush shingles atop their substrate). This was a very time-consuming painting in both the drawing and painting stages, but I think it was well worth the effort!

Yakushima Island was not as fertile for rice production as other areas of Japan, so during the Edo period, Yakushima paid for its shoganate taxes by logging sugi trees and producing wooden shingles rather than in the more customary rice. This deforestation had negative environmental impacts. Reforestation and conservation efforts including declaring the island a UNESCO World Heritage site have since tried to rebalance the important island forest ecosystem. This painting’s title references both the plant’s growth habit and common grouping name as well as Yakushima’s ecological history.

This is Shingling, acrylic on round wooden panel, 12x12x.875”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's "Shingling" acrylic painting of Ficus pumila on a round wooden panel.

Week 3 of the Arts Itoya Residency

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Shelby Prindaville's Arts Itoya solo exhibition "Ikigai" show card!

In my third week at Arts Itoya, I continued to spend a lot of time in the studio! Rainy season had officially commenced, so studio time was even more cozy. I also caught a cold, but it was a fast one - only lasting a few days. I was happy it had waited to strike until after my Yakushima visit, as that meant I didn’t have any issues with my scuba diving or intense hike.

One rainy afternoon, my bike hydroplaned atop some slick ground tiles and I hit the ground, so I had a number of scrapes and bruises from that. I was even more inclined to stick to the studio afterwards! We were also aware that our exhibition was coming up quickly. I designed my own show card as well as the poster for everyone’s shows within the multi-artist exhibition gallery. For my own show, I chose to title it Ikigai (生き甲斐). Ikigai is a Japanese concept/philosophy that has already made its way into English, much like zen, bonsai, and wabi-sabi. Ikigai is your reason for living; it combines passion, mission, and profession.

There were still a couple of new adventures! I had discovered that there is a lake with swan boats relatively nearby, so Emily and I went on a swan paddle boat outing. We also visited the Yoko Museum and Japanese Garden in Takeo. We observed that all the ceramics were wired down, and my theory is that this is an earthquake-damage-prevention measure.

Arts Itoya Painting 2: Pursuit (Ichi-go ichi-e)

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My second painting is atop an aluminum leaf paper. This paper was hard to work with, as the paint doesn’t grip to it as well as I’d like (and my new Holbein metal primer did not help), and the tape I used to anchor the paper to a board ended up removing the foil off the corners. However, I persevered! The subject is a male Japanese rhinoceros beetle, called kabutomushi here in Japan: Allomyrina dichotoma. The adults only live for 2-3 months after pupating.

I plan to carefully varnish the beetle before framing this piece, but I’ll do that at home - so for here, it’s done! All of the metal leaf papers are hard to photograph, but I’m pretty happy with the below image.

This is Pursuit (Ichi-go ichi-e), acrylic on aluminum leaf paper, 11.5x17”, 2024. The Japanese romaji in the title, ichi-go ichi-e or 一期一会 in kanji, is a four-character Japanese proverb that means “one time, one meeting” and is about embracing the present.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a kabutomushi or Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Allomyrina dichotoma) on aluminum leaf paper.

Week 2 of the Arts Itoya Residency

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Once we got to the studio, I began to paint! I tend to put in pretty long hours, so there was far less exploring going on - but there was a bit. While all the residents get along well, several enjoy independence. Emily and I both get along really well and like the same destinations so we began doing pretty much everything together. We asked a volunteer with the residency, Charlie, if he’d mind showing us a nearby koi store. With the owners’ permission, I used my underwater camera to take photos, much to Emily’s delight! We got some good images and the koi store owners were so very sweet. Japanese hospitality is outrageous. Despite the fact that it was clear we weren’t going to be customers, and they’d already done us a favor by letting us take photos of the fish, they also sat us down, showed us some documentary clips of their store and fish at different times, plied us with tea, coffee, and cookies, and offered their home’s art up for viewing as well as their bathroom to us. I need to up my hospitality game!

I learned that their average koi’s lifespan is 100 years, but that the oldest koi fish in Japan lived for 200 years! They also shared that this is the slowest time of year for their shop, and that the most spectacular fish come through in October and November. However, they are going to be getting new stock in next week so we plan to return!

We also began to explore a bit more of the culinary scene in Takeo, but it’s rough being a vegetarian here. Our favorite places include Irie, a Jamaican/Italian bar with a delightful owner and employee pair, as well as Sol de Verano (a Spanish tapas bar with delicious Basque cheesecake) and a tofu hot pot and gelato place. We also tend to eat at least one meal per day from a konbini (Family Mart or 7-11).

Hiro took four of us who wanted to go on an excursion to a hydrangea temple and shrine which is up a mountain in Takeo, and that was really beautiful, though my ears refused to pop for some time so I was happy when I could finally hear again!

Intersperse that with a lot of studio time, and a few late night onsen visits, and you have a full picture of my second week!

Arts Itoya Painting 1: Duality

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The first painting I completed at Arts Itoya is of two backlit hibiscus flowers from Yakushima. The substrate is a gold and silver leaf flecked Torinoko paper; I added the translucent green coloration. I was inspired by the dark fantasy iconography of flowers in anime, particularly in Hell’s Paradise as well in Demon Slayer and Suzume.

This is Duality, acrylic on gold and silver leaf flecked Torinoko paper, 14.37x11.6”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting, “Duality,” of two hibiscus flowers on decorative washi paper.

Starting the Arts Itoya Residency in Takeo: Week 1

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After flying into Fukuoka, I took an express train into Takeo. It’s about an hour and a half away, and I got there in the late afternoon. Hiro picked me up, and when I got to the residency three of the four other artists had already arrived! They include Stewart from New Mexico, Anna from Massachusetts, and Won from South Korea. Hiro showed me my room, where he had already stowed my two large pieces of luggage I had shipped with the takkyubin. He then gathered everyone together to show us the studio space, which is approximately a half mile away from the house. While that’s definitely walkable, Arts Itoya has very kindly provided each of the residents with an electric bike! This is actually my first time riding one, and I love it. Often if the ride is pretty flat I’ll just leave it off, but when there’s a fair amount of uphill I turn it on and the motor does most of the work! The problem was that one of the bikes was in the shop and Hiro wanted to pick it up, so he jogged to the studio while we rode behind him, and then we all walked to the bike shop together to pick up the other bike. We then explored the studio, made some requests (I needed way more tabletop than was currently on offer), and we rode back! Stewart is also vegetarian, so we then tried to find a place to have dinner and located a pizza shop not too far away so we headed there. It turns out it’s run by an Italian who moved to Takeo with his Japanese wife; they are both very nice. After that, we headed home and went to bed.

The next day, I began unpacking, did some laundry since I’d already been in Japan for a week, and sifted through my photos to see what I’d start to work on in the studio. The last resident also arrived: Emily from California. We’re a surprisingly US-heavy house - apparently a weird coincidence as most of the stays are more internationally diverse. The next few days, I mostly stuck to the house as I began to sketch out a number of pieces from my room’s desk, but I joined Emily on an excursion to a small botanical garden in Takeo and then visited a shrine with a 3,000 year-old camphor tree.

I invited Emily to go to Fukuoka with me that Thursday. I wanted to go to Fukuoka pretty early on during the residency for a few reasons: 1) the weather was only going to get rainier and hotter; 2) I wanted to go to Fukuoka Zoo to see tanuki and hopefully get some good images to paint from; 3) Rina, the woman I befriended in the Yakushima airport, was staying in Fukuoka for just a week before heading back to her home in Tokyo and she wanted to meet up again.

We headed out at 6:45am, as that would get us to the zoo right around their opening time of 9am and I suspected that our chances of seeing active tanuki were highest right in the morning since they’re nocturnal. On our walk to the zoo, we happened to see a dead Japanese centipede in the road. Mukade are a pretty iconic Japanese insect so it was interesting to see one; they’re quite large and have a nasty bite. When we got to the zoo ticket office, the worker looked really surprised that the only exhibit we asked about was the tanuki. We nevertheless beelined it to that spot, and after some confusion, we realized it was a very poorly positioned cage behind another caged hallway. There was a lone tanuki inhabiting it, but she wasn’t out - she was curled up in a bed in a hut and we could just make out a little fur. There were a lot of signs, though; upon translating them, we learned that this tanuki was named Immako and she was an ancient little tanuki who had already outlived their average lifespan. Wild tanuki typically live 6-8 years in the wild and 11-13 years in captivity. Immako is 13.75 years old. There was another sign discussing her kidney problems and sharing that sometimes she’s not in her cage at all as she’s receiving kidney treatment.

None of this boded well, but Emily and I decided to circle back and took in some of the other animal exhibits in the meantime. Around 10:30am, our explorations took us right near her cage again so Emily suggested checking back in. I thought it was probably too soon but why not… but when we came back, the zookeepers were getting their breakfasts ready and Immako was up and waiting patiently for it! Unfortunately, while Immako is a very sweet being, she no longer really visually captures “tanuki.” I hope she breaks all the tanuki lifespan records, but for my painting purposes, she wasn’t representative enough of the species as a whole.

After we finished with the zoo, we checked out the botanical garden that is right beside the zoo as your admittance is included to both when you enter either. The zoo had a number of species but on the grand scheme of zoos was a smaller one; the botanical garden on the other hand surpassed our expectations and had some amazing outdoor gardens and greenhouses. Emily currently almost exclusively paints koi fish, and we found our first koi fish in Japan in one of the fountains at the botanical garden. We also saw a wild snake! They had some beautiful roses in the rose garden, and I particularly liked the ones that were grown into tree forms. In the greenhouses, not only did they have some truly stunning specimens (their Welwitschia mirabilis were spectacular and their barrel cacti were also very impressive) but they also had an orchid sale! That was a little torturous, honestly, as I wanted to buy a number of their plants but I’ve looked into it before and transporting plants internationally is a giant headache involving getting a CITES certificate and dealing with customs and it just isn’t practical at this time for me.

Post-garden, we met up with Rina at a vegan cafe and had a really nice late lunch. Then Emily and I walked through downtown Fukuoka to a soufflé pancake restaurant so we could try the famed Japanese soufflé pancakes! After that, we returned to Takeo. That evening, we decided to visit the onsen in Takeo for the first time! We splurged a little for the outdoor onsen at 740¥ (the indoor one is 500¥), and also had to rent towels for another 300¥ since we didn’t bring any along. We discovered the outdoor onsen actually has three different pools and a sauna inside; there’s the outdoor hot bath at 41°C, the indoor hot bath at 42.5°C, and a cold pool called a mizuburo (that doesn’t have a listed temperature but a worker said is maybe around 14°C) which is icy cold. Our tolerance of the outdoor hot bath is probably only around 8 minutes, but then a plunge into the cold bath for a couple minutes and dipping a hand towel into its water to perch on your neck or head in the hot bath means you can cycle through for much longer!

The next day I drew again, and then on Saturday I was finally ready to haul all my art materials to the studio to begin to paint!

My Temporal Artwork: Chromatograms

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Some artists primarily work in transitory media - their artwork dissolves, melts, is eaten, is a performance, and so on. Often the documentation of this sort of artwork in many ways supplants the original; suddenly the photograph or video is the primary way that audiences engage with the piece. Andy Goldsworthy’s work is a good example.

Most of my artwork is intended to be of archival quality - I want it to endure for centuries, if not millennia! However, some of my pieces do have a more limited lifespan, at least in terms of continuing to match the photo documentation I took when I created the original artwork. My chromatography series are in that category, and I discussed this in the artist statement I published in this summer’s Annals of Iowa journal (Volume 82, Number 3). Here’s the pertinent excerpt:

“Over time and exposure to sunlight, the less stable plant pigments in these chromatograms (the greens, blues, purples, and reds) degrade, while the more stable colors (the yellows, browns, and blacks) remain; my Literal Landscapes become more and more sepia as they age.  To me, this is a reminder that our natural world is vibrant but vulnerable, and that we should relish what we have while stepping up our interventions to improve our ecological balance for future generations… or the living earth around us will continue to dull.”

What does that change actually look like, you might ask? I thought it would be interesting to rephotograph one of the chromatograms to show you! Here is a side-by-side comparison of Literal Landscapes: Whiterock Conservancy 1, mixed media chromatogram including natural ecosystem pigments, alcohol, and gel medium on filter paper, 8x8", 2021; the first image was taken immediately after making the piece, while the second was taken over two years later.

To be clear, I still find the current versions compelling! The aging process of these chromatograms unsurprisingly mirrors what happens in nature as plants progress through seasons. They’re currently evoking autumn to me, while their original versions were more spring/summer. I bet a photo taken further down the line would show continued movement towards the monochromatic, so I might repeat this experiment again in a couple more years to try to determine when they will achieve their final evolution.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 8

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The wooden spool end before the mosaic and concrete.

I’m always interested in manmade constructions altered by the environment and time, and when I kept finding broken fragments of marble paving stones, concrete pathing, ceramic tiles, and so forth, I started picking them up. After amassing quite a collection, I decided I’d make a mosaic that referenced some of the artifact displays I’d seen in Athenian museums, so I took the angle grinder with a diamond blade to them to cut them down to at or below my desired height.

I then put one unique piece per type into the second recycled wood round from the electrical spool - this one had the upraised interior wooden frame with a circular outside and a square inside. (To block the holes, I had already cut and glued down a piece of masonite to the back - see the image to the left.) Once I found the layout I wanted, I put a smoother white concrete (compared to the previous large-grogged grey type I used in Realms) in and around it. I thought I probably wanted to paint it, but by this point my show installation was the next day so we just installed it in that mid-way state.

Once installed, my show was up until my last day in Athens, so I then took it down and brought it back to the US. Then I began to test out different possible compositions in Photoshop, and I settled on painting a couple rings of color - the inner gold and the outer blue - around the central composition in a design that references the mati aka evil eye charms. The three cool-colored mosaic fragments in the center are intentionally reminiscent of an eye as well.

After I painted the two rings, they looked too new, so I weathered them a little and made the blue border bleed into the white band inside to soften that edge.

This is Pathways, found marble, concrete, and ceramic paver fragments with acrylic and concrete on recycled wood round, 17.5x17.5x.1.3, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's Greek pathways mosaic relief.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 7

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This painting was the third I started… but the seventh to finish! Many people have asked me how long it takes to finish a piece of artwork, and the answer is harder to provide than they might think because I’m usually working on multiple pieces at a time and each one’s process and progress looks different.

The substrate for this is once again papyrus, but for the first time I experimented with using crackle paste. This was particularly experimental in that you’re supposed to use crackle paste only atop rigid surfaces, and papyrus is flexible. This meant that as the crackle paste seized, it actually buckled the papyrus beneath, leading to less dramatic cracking in the paste but creating a very irregular topography and shrinking the overall dimensions of the papyrus. Painting a relatively detailed and representational subject on this surface was really difficult, which led to me fighting with it for weeks. I might’ve even abandoned it, except every visitor to my studio remarked on how much they looked forward to seeing it finished and that it was already a favorite! Eventually, I made peace with it and could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am really pleased with how it turned out; my studio guests were right to urge me to complete it! Also from a completionist angle, my Mount Lycabettus tortoise times were always spent with two tortoises - I painted the larger, presumed male tortoise on the antique tiles, and this papryus piece depicts his smaller, presumably female companion. It feels nice to have finished portraits of each of them.

This is a tentative title: Heritage, acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus, 15.5x21.75", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus painting of a marginated tortoise.

Week 5 in Athens

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I started off my fifth week by working in the studio, this time with the angle grinder and a diamond blade, cutting all my found pieces of street and paving tiles and stones to approximately the same height and then cementing them into a mosaic. I continued working in the studio (mostly painting) on Tuesday and Wednesday as well. On Thursday, I took an early morning hike up Mount Lycabettus again with my new field biologist friend as he had located one of a wild male fox’s dens, and knew I’d like to see it! Fox time is even earlier than tortoise time, so afterward I had breakfast at a cafe on the mountain and then revisited my two tortoises. The smaller, likely female tortoise had just finished her repast and began to enter her burrow. The rest of the day I was back to work, and I kept it half of Friday as well… and then, it was installation time for my show.

I bought L-shaped installation screws from the local hardware store and installation went relatively smoothly… except for one wall, which after we laboriously installed most of Marginated (I paired one tile of it with one tile from Symbolism in a separate spot) had a too-big-to-ignore blank area, but it was too small for any other artwork. I really didn’t want to move Marginated, so I thought about it and realized that a small mirror would be conceptually powerful and aesthetically perfect. I’d titled my show Athenian Habitat, so a mirror puts the viewer into the ecosystem - which they are - and adds some actual life and movement into the exhibition. The next problem was where to find the right mirror! I thought it was possible one might be sold at the general store I purchased my tree slice from, and I was right… but they were only sold as a part of a mixed media home decor sculpture which had two circular mirrors but also several decorative tin discs and a metal rod and plate display.

I went to five other stores (a home goods store, a pharmacy, a supermarket, and two hardware stores) and none of them had what I wanted and weren’t sure exactly where to go though I was recommended Ikea (which is quite a distance away!). I didn’t want to spend another day or two hunting for another option, so I decided that one of the mirrors in the mixed media home decor sculpture would work… if I could get them off in one piece, as they were soldered onto the other metal design elements and armature.

I had to overpay for the components I wanted since they came attached to a bunch I didn’t, and then as I walked back I began just trying to dissemble it by hand. I got the smaller of the two mirrors involved off pretty easily! Then I started working on the big one as I arrived back at the gallery. Dimitri came over to try to help, but he shattered the larger one in his attempt. I eventually got it off anyhow, but the shattered glass was distracting rather than complementary so I went with the smaller of the mirrors.

On Saturday it was really hot, so I had intended to go to the Byzantine & Christian Museum but I ended up just going back to the studio to work. Dimitri and Maria put together a barbecue dinner (with some vegetarian options!) that evening in part to celebrate my exhibition opening, which was very fun! I did make my visit to the Byzantine Museum happen on Sunday, though, even though it was again really hot (due to the heat wave named Cerberus), and then Dimitri and Maria had such a nice time they wanted a redux dinner… but this time the police shut down their outdoor grilling. They persevered with hot plates and a griddle indoors, and I enjoyed their Za'atar pita dressing!

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 5

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When I first conceived of a nine-tile piece (Marginated) and a five-turned-into-four-tile piece due to one of the pieces being destroyed at a sandblasting facility (though then one of the four remaining tiles broke into two during sanding, so it reconverted to five total pieces-and-fragments), I had planned to paint an animal on the larger composition and a plant on the narrower one. I imagined it might be a tortoise and an olive branch, and as time passed and I gathered experiences and reference imagery, both ideas resonated more and more strongly.

Athens is named as such because Athena and Poseidon battled out becoming the city’s patron god through each giving it a gift. Poseidon gave a salt-water sea, while Athena gave the gift of an olive tree atop the Acropolis. The olive tree was deemed the better gift, and so the city was named Athens with the patron of Athena (and was punished with insufficient fresh water by Poseidon). Olive trees are ubiquitous in Athens and Greece, growing in the ground as well as in decorative containers throughout the city. They are easy to identify due to their iconic appearance. Their fruit, oil, and wood are each major industries, and squatters can even gain land rights by planting an olive tree on contested parcels. The olive branch has become a worldwide symbol of peace.

I decided to paint an olive branch with immature olives on it, and atop the roughened glaze sections, I kept its coloration standard while on the raw clay body I converted it into a hot/burnt color palette that bring global warming, fires, and drought to mind (as I did to a lesser degree on Marginated as well).

Once again, this piece can be displayed variably, and/or in combination with Marginated.

Symbolism, acrylic on five partially deglazed 19th century ceramic tiles and tile fragments, variable display dimensions with core dimensions of 17.25x5.5x.25", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of an olive branch on partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in its core composition.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of an olive branch on partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in an alternative layout.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of an olive branch on partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in an alternative layout.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 4

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I am so happy with how this overall project turned out! The tiles fought hard to keep their slick glass surfaces and people kept trying to persuade me to give up, but after a lot of failed attempts, I eventually prevailed in removing the top-most surface but leaving most of the glaze, crackle, and chip defects (and adding more defects of my own in the process).

From conception, I had planned on a nine-tile ceramic artwork and a five-tile-and-fragment ceramic artwork. One of the whole tiles ended up completely ruined while at the second sandblasting facility, so I was down to nine and four. I was initially pretty sure my nine-tile square artwork was going to be a tortoise, but I tried out a variety of compositions… and confirmed that a tortoise was my favorite option!

This project is exciting in that it is an experimental fusion between ceramics and painting, and it also uses as its substrate antique tiles from the 1840s. The multiple components means that I can display this piece in infinite ways; the “core composition” is of course the most resolved option but irregular spacing and/or scrambling encourages additional viewer appreciation for the artistry of each tile in its own right as well as introduces additional room for conceptual narratives around ecology, encroaching human environments into the natural world, negative space, abstraction, and time.

The subject is the larger, presumably male adult marginated tortoise I met on Mount Lycabettus - at least one group of locals call him Petros. When I was thinking about what to title this piece, I realized that marginated also means “marked or characterized by margins,” such that the word describes both the subject and substrate and therefore seemed to me to be the perfect title.

Marginated, acrylic on nine partially deglazed 19th century ceramic tiles, variable display dimensions with core dimensions of 16x16x.25", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a marginated tortoise on nine partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in the core dimensions.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a marginated tortoise on nine partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in a more conceptual, open configuration.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 3

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This is my first Eurasian hoopoe artwork! It is painted on a natural tree trunk slice which I obtained here in Athens. The central element, the “seed,” is the unaltered center-most part of the wood as well as its hollow. It also subtly references the “mati” or “evil eye” which is a prevalent design in Greece.

I plan to paint at least one, maybe two more hoopoe pieces… though I may not have time to complete them while I’m here in Athens. We’ll see!

The Seed, acrylic on tree trunk slice, 15.25x15.5x1”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting atop a tree trunk slice of two hoopoes on a branch.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 2

This is my second finished painting completed as an artist in residence at Phoenix Athens in Greece! It depicts the wild sparrowhawk mother of the chick I previously painted. The Eurasian sparrowhawk’s scientific name is Accipiter nisus, with “accipiter” being Latin for hawk and “Nisus” due to the Greek myth of King Nisus/Nisos (who in most versions of the myth is turned into a raptor upon his daughter’s betrayal).

I’ve always been interested in syncretism and occasionally infuse religious references into my artwork. Working within various European, Greek, and Egyptian traditions and media and adding my own conservation-based values into the mix here, I was inspired to give this female sparrowhawk a halo. The word “halo” comes from the Greek language and is artistically used for Greek deities including Helios, Eos, and Eosphorous, but the stylization I gave mine is more traditionally associated with Christianity though it is believed to have originated in Iran.

This is Syncretism, acrylic on papyrus, 24x16.5”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic on papyrus painting of a female adult Eurasian sparrowhawk with a halo, titled “Syncretism," 2023.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 1

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Here is my first finished painting completed as an artist in residence at Phoenix Athens in Greece! It depicts a wild sparrowhawk chick in a somewhat stylized nest of branches.

This is Potential, acrylic on papyrus, 24x16.5”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s painting of a wild Eurasian sparrowhawk chick on papryus.

My First Week in Athens

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I arrived in Athens on Monday, June 12th in the late afternoon, and by the time I got my checked luggage and took a taxi to my residency, it was around 6:30pm. I greeted my hosts and their two artists in residence. The residency director, Dimitri, showed me to where I’d be staying and mentioned he didn’t have time to prepare it as he would have liked but hoped it would be acceptable and that he knew I wanted access to A/C (I had requested that if possible given that it can get up to 104°F/40°C in the summers), which this apartment has. Then we went out for drinks and invited a field biologist friend of Dimitri’s, as I had asked to have him show me some of the local fauna and flora on the nearby Lycabettus mountain. It is also the highest point in the whole city (and is inexplicably titled a hill here, as in Lycabettus Hill, but I assure you - and have photographic proof - that it is not!).

I returned back home and went to bed. I awoke in the middle of the night and discovered a large cockroach, so the next morning Dimitri brought a can of spray over. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bigger infestation than the can of spray could resolve, so he then spent hours patching crevices and holes in the place with cement, caulk, and tape, and finally a couple days later an exterminator came. Since then, I haven’t seen another (fingers crossed)! In the midst of dealing with that, my bathroom plumbing also flooded the place with contaminated water, and we’ve since had three plumber visits - I now have a brand new toilet, too. I’m hoping that was all my bad luck for the trip, right at the beginning!

I’ve had great luck, too, though! On my second day here, I went up Lycabettus with my new field biologist friend (somewhat confusingly for narrative purposes, he’s also named Dimitris so I will just refer to him as the field biologist). He brought his very nice birding photography gear, including a tripod and scope, because he has been observing a sparrowhawk nest and was happy to show it to me. It was AMAZING. I had a great time observing them; I’ve seen both adult and baby raptors up close before at LSU Vet Med, wildlife sanctuaries, and/or zoos, but to intimately see a healthy, wild sparrowhawk family through a scope was magical. We then climbed to the top of the mountain at sunset to get a bird's eye view of the city and the Acropolis.  A few days later, I went on a five-or-six mile walk around the Athens city center and the base of the Acropolis with one of the other artists. I next visited the National Garden, as I was hoping to find one of the native tortoises. I did not, so I went back up the mountain the following afternoon to try to spot some, but then heard from other people in the trails that they're mostly around in the early morning.  However, the trip wasn’t wasted as I then ran into a Eurasian hoopoe. Unfortunately, I had the wrong camera settings still running from the previous evening and didn't realize it, so those photos are not usable.

Interspersed between all of the above events was studio time! I began work on two different sparrowhawk paintings on papyrus and have been trying to get the surface of the 19th century tiles I acquired in Amsterdam to become more receptive to paint, as I want to use my OPEN Acrylics atop them and would like the resultant work to be relatively archivally stable. First, I tried hand sanding to no success. Then I tried a rotary sanding attachment on an angle grinder, but the surface of the tiles is not actually flat so it left a lot of pockets of shiny glaze. I decided to see if I could find a store capable of etching my tiles instead, as etching liquid/cream or sandblasting would uniformly work on irregular surfaces. I took the tiles to a glass store that told us they could sandblast them, but when I arrived it turned out their sand was far too fine and it would not result in the type of more open surface I was looking for, so they sent me to a sandblasting factory. There, they assured me they could do it and that I should come back the next day to retrieve them and pay. However, the next day it turned out the glaze was too hard for their sandblasting material, and they could not do as I’d asked after all.

The food here has been uniformly delicious, and Athens is in my opinion the most vegan and vegetarian-friendly city I’ve been to, which has been a very pleasant surprise! I knew the Mediterranean diet would lend itself pretty well to my vegetarianism, but there are an abundance of purely vegan restaurants around and several servers have proactively offered vegan modifications to vegetarian dishes.

My Upcoming Summer 2023 Artist Residency

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I am very excited to announce that I will be a Villa Exarchia artist-in-residence at Phoenix Athens with director Dimitri Yin in Athens, Greece for six weeks this summer!

I hope to create a new body of artwork atop substrates that speak directly to the age and history of Athens: papyrus, old ceramic tiles, and marble. Dimitri has shared that I will be able to visit a population of endangered tortoises residing nearby, and I look forward to documenting them as well as other fauna and/or flora in the Athenian ecosystem.

This will be my first time in Greece, and it will also be my first international artist residency since the pandemic descended (though it will be my ninth international residency and thirteenth residency total).

Είμαι πολύ ενθουσιασμένη! (That hopefully is Greek for “I am very excited!” I’ve been learning a little Greek in anticipation of my stay, but it’s pretty slow going as switching to a new alphabet is difficult for me.)