contemporary art

New Artwork: Redistribution

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The DDR stationery (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, called the German Democratic Republic, GDR, or just East Germany in English), I was most excited to work atop from VEB Orange was a non-coated piece - a first for my Soviet occupation series - and I bought two for experimentation purposes! I suspected that given the normal paper surface, I might be able to erase a portion of the emblem from the surface. I experimented on one and discovered that with extremely sustained erasing, it was indeed possible.

I got to work, and eventually I managed to take a chunk out of the emblem and reinforced the fainter perimeter spots with pastel pencils. I then painted a red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) consuming the structure, dropping crumbs into it and below.

This is Redistribution, acrylic and pastel pencil on East German Socialist Competition stationery from 1984, 11.38x8.2”, 2026.

Shelby Prindaville's mixed painting of a red squirrel eating a DDR Socialist Competition emblem.

New Artwork: Breaking the Pattern

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I found this magazine, Ilutegija (Maker of Beauty), at a vintage bookseller's stall in Balti Jaam, Tallinn, just before leaving Estonia. Ilutegija began publication before Estonia's 1991 restoration of independence from the USSR; this issue was published at the start of 1992. Though I found it in Tallinn, it was published in Pärnu - where my Estonian residency was located. Due to the timing of my finding it, however, this is actually the first of the paintings made at my second residency this summer: Takt in Berlin, Germany.

The page is an embroidery pattern for bullfinches on a pine branch (the Eurasian or common bullfinch, Pyrrhula pyrrhula, on a Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris). Rather than follow the stitching instructions, I painted a realistic male bullfinch and pine branch directly over the simplified pattern for him, leaving the original female bullfinch and the rest of the printed branch untouched, so the pattern and the painting sit side by side.

The bullfinch is a songbird, and in regional folklore it's tied to steadfast winter cheer. Estonia sang its way to independence in the Singing Revolution.

This is Breaking the Pattern, acrylic on Estonian embroidery-pattern page from 1992, 11.6x8.06”, 2026.

Shelby Prindaville's painting of a bullfinch on a pine branch atop an Estonian embroidery-pattern page from 1992

New Artwork: The New Collective

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This piece continues my series of paintings atop printed stationery from the Soviet occupation period in Estonia, issued under the ENSV (the Eesti Nõukogude Sotsialistlik Vabariik, or Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic).

The substrate features Soviet-era industrial graphic design for Pärnu KEK (the Pärnu Külaehituskombinaat, or Collective Farm Construction Office). Founded to build infrastructure for rural collective farms, KEK eventually expanded into a broader portfolio of late-Soviet modernist architecture, becoming one of the more distinctive construction enterprises of the era.

I chose to paint another realistic, volumetric stork, this time sitting in a flat graphic semicircle “nest” that mirrors the geometry of the underlying design. KEK's original mandate was building the physical infrastructure of agricultural Estonia. Storks nest reliably on farm rooftops and chimneys across Estonia, colonizing the infrastructure the decommissioned collective left behind.

This is The New Collective, acrylic on occupied Estonian printed cardstock c. 1980, 11.38x8.2”, 2026.

Shelby Prindaville's painting of a white stork nesting on Pärnu KEK ENSV stationery c. 1980.