My Temporal Artwork: Fugitive Veterinary Stains

I recently posted about my temporal chromatograms, and now I’d like to post about my temporal veterinary artwork!

I love using new media, so when I got the chance to be the first-ever artist in residence at a veterinary school in the United States (at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine in 2022), I set myself the challenge of using veterinary chemicals, medicines, materials, and tools in each of my pieces created there. As far as I know, no one else has attempted to use either stains from clinical pathology and histology or veterinary chemicals and medicine as paint before. This meant I had no idea how archival any of the artwork would be.

I soon found out that a lot of the veterinary stain and chemical pigmentation rapidly goes fugitive, which is a term we use in art when pigmentation bleaches out over time and/or with exposure to sunlight.

While a number of my paintings from my LSU Vet Med residency have therefore undergone a transformation, the most drastic one is that of Wild Card. Its background actively changed as I was painting it; the initial coloration was intensely cyan and purple. The cyan started disappearing within days, but the purple was more stable. However, the purple began to fade away in a matter of weeks. Here is a comparison of Wild Card on the day I finished the painting, and then another photo approximately a year-and-a-half later.

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Again, I still find the latter result compelling. Fortunately, so did the viewers! The purplish background splotches went fugitive sufficiently quickly such that the version of the painting I exhibited in my solo show at LSU Vet Med had already mostly resolved to that of the above right image, and I sold the piece to a very nice emergency veterinarian who said he thought Wild Card had “aged like fine wine.” The novelty of how it will continue to age also interests us both!

More Advocate Press Coverage of My LSU SVM Artist Residency!

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).

I've Finished a New LSU SVM Artwork: Overlooked!

I’m beginning a new artist residency, but I still have some paintings I’d like to do from my summer 2022 artist residency at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine so I worked on them before I headed out! Last summer I had begun, but not yet finished, the contour drawing underpinning this painting of two juvenile possums. I worked on the background this past fall, and began to paint it at the beginning of this summer! The background is a chemical stain from the anatomy lab; I’ve had some trouble with the lightfastness of the veterinary stains I’ve tried in the past, which is why I gave this one so much time between setting it down and painting atop it! Both due to the time involved and my research, I have more faith in this particular stain’s staying power. This stain is called orcein and is derived from lichens, and it has been used as a fabric dye in addition to scientific usages.

This is Overlooked, acrylic and orcein stain from the LSU SVM anatomy lab on Aquabord panel, 24x18x1.5”, 2023.

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UPROAR Magazine Cover Image and Feature!

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.

And Now, the Morningside University News!

The Morningside University News just got in on all the excitement - “Associate professor of art Shelby Prindaville uses skills towards historical process” was published on August 26th! The image on the right is a screenshot of the introduction, but check out the whole article in the link above or take a look at this PDF.

Country Roads Magazine Feature!

Country Roads Magazine just published a fabulous article on my LSU Vet Med artist residency in both their digital and September print edition! On the left, you can see a screenshot of the beginning of the write-up to whet your appetite.

You can read the digital piece here, see a full PDF, or pick up a physical copy if you’re in the Louisiana/Mississippi distribution zone!

Sioux City Journal Feature!

I’ve been getting some nice Louisiana press for my summer LSU Vet Med artist residency, and now there’s great local coverage as well - with more in the works! Here’s the Sioux City Journal digital article “Morningside professor participates in first-ever artist residency at LSU vet school” by reporter Dolly Butz, and here’s a PDF of the print version!

Louisiana PBS Televised Feature!

Louisiana Public Broadcasting Service’s The State We’re In did a televised feature on my artist residency and exhibition at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine - you can watch it here!

From their own website: “Louisiana: The State We’re In, Louisiana's only statewide news magazine, is in its 45th season on the air. The program airs Fridays at 7PM and Sundays at 4:30PM on the six-station LPB network that includes stations in Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, and Shreveport. It also streams at lpb.org/livetv and airs on LPB’s sister station WLAE-TV32 in New Orleans on Fridays at 7PM and on WYES-TV, the PBS station for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, at 7:30PM.

This award-winning show combines in-depth coverage about the important issues in the state along with expert analysis. […] It is one of the longest-running television programs in the nation.”

My LSU Vet Med Exhibition and Opening Reception!

Here are photos from my solo exhibition and opening reception at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, co-sponsored by the LSU School of Art! The reception was amazing; over 80 people attended and they were all very engaged throughout the evening. We began with a welcome speech delivered by LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Dean Oliver Garden, followed by speeches from LSU College of Art + Design Dean Alkis Tsolakis and LSU School of Art Director Rod Parker, and then my artist lecture!

By the end of the evening, 6 of the 8 paintings/relief/sculpture were sold (only Hosts and Singularity remain available), and 3 of the 13 ceramics were purchased in addition to countless prints and greeting cards. Through the course of the rest of the exhibition, 3 more ceramics sold along with additional prints and greeting cards. I was a little surprised at how popular the mosquito reproductions were as they sold out quite quickly, but I’ve since learned there’s a well-known joke that mosquitoes are the state bird of Louisiana!

In the slideshow, you’ll see that in addition to the artwork walls and reproduction sales table, I also had a display table of some of the veterinary materials - medicines, chemicals, stains, tools, bones - I used in each of the pieces of artwork!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20 Process

Here are a couple of photos of the in-progress Vulture Sculpture! In the first image, you can see how I built an internal armature out of pink styrofoam insulation, wire, and disposable chopsticks. Armatures are really helpful for a few reasons: A) they provide structure and support to bolster strength and keep the clay from sagging, B) they weigh a lot less than clay which makes the piece-in-progress lighter so it puts less stress on weight-bearing areas while wet/uncured C) if you leave the armature inside - like you can do with QuickCure Clay - the finished piece is lighter than if it were solid clay which is typically desirable, and finally D) the armature materials usually cost less than using an equivalent amount of clay.

Then in the second image, it’s midway along; I’m still sculpting the QCC (note the head and wings are unfinished) but it’s taking real shape and I’ve already incorporated the artificial turf, though I have yet to “mold” it with the heat gun. Finally, there’s the finished piece in a similar orientation for comparison!

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LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20

This is the final piece of artwork I completed on-site at LSU Vet Med during my two-month summer 2022 residency! I think finishing 20 exhibitable pieces including mixed media paintings, a relief, ceramics, and a sculpture in 7 weeks is a remarkable feat, so I am very happy with my productivity.

I worked right up until the day of the exhibition opening on this piece, but I managed to get it “finished” in time - I put that in quotes as I still needed to briefly borrow it back from the exhibition midway through to put a protective varnish on top!

I had wanted to do a sculpture this whole time because A) I’ve always liked putting on exhibitions that have multiple disciplines and media on display to more deeply engage a broad viewership, B) I wanted to really highlight QuickCure Clay, as I’d helped create it with Dr. John Pojman at LSU a decade ago and it felt right to use it in at least a couple of pieces this summer, and C) I had been given a couple pieces of artificial turf from the wildlife hospital that I wanted to incorporate into artwork in some way, and relatively early on I had a lightbulb moment wherein I thought the astroturf had vulture neck-feather vibes! It worked very well, in that a lot of people couldn’t figure out where the artificial turf was used and at least one viewer told me she thought I thought the gravel I used as an installation aid was astroturf. Another viewer asked me if this was a taxidermied piece, which made me feel really good about the likeness!

I titled this piece Vulture Sculpture mostly because I didn’t have time to think about titling it when I had to make the show labels (I didn’t even think it was likely to get finished for it!), but I also do like the rhyme and the clear identification of the species of the bird. I sold this sculpture that same evening to the fabulous Dr. Mark Mitchell from Wildlife and ZooMed and his partner Dr. Lorrie Hale Mitchell from Integrative Medicine! They very kindly were willing to let me take it on exhibit first (as I’m doing with the rest of the sold paintings), but I made some delicate choices with this piece - the claws, the beak tip - that meant I thought it best to let them just take it after my LSU Vet Med solo show came down instead of potentially injuring the piece in shipping.

This is Vulture Sculpture, a mixed media sculpture of a black vulture including QuickCure Clay and ZooMed’s artificial turf, 13.5" x 7.5" x 20.5", 2022.

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LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 7 Process

Here are some in-progress photos of Seeing Double!

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LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 7

My seventh artwork almost didn’t get made on site - I knew what I wanted to do, but tried in vain to get my hands on a necessary component until Dr. Clare Scully came to the rescue!

Let me back up and explain it from the beginning. A very cute Kunekune pig named Tigger came in for observation and diagnosis and he left the next day feeling much better (and after I gave him a quick cuddle). With his owners’ permission, I decided I’d like to feature him in a painting or two! As I always do when I see a new species here at LSU Vet Med, I started asking about what veterinary materials they use specifically with that species - in this case, pigs. After hearing about a handful of items, the ones that seemed the most useful for my purposes were the pig sorting panels or “pig boards” and Dremel rotary tools (used to sand down hooves). I had brought a rotary tool with me as a sculpting aid already, so that was easy - but the pig sorting panel was a harder acquisition. This is because all the ones they had on hand were made out of plastic, and were pretty clearly intended to be easy to clean in a way that would make it harder to work archivally on top of and they were also obnoxiously colored. Wooden ones are regularly used, too, but there weren’t any in the large animal hospital as typically the wooden ones are just created on demand in a farm woodshop to save money and time.

I started asking all the large animal veterinarians, residents, and students if they knew of a source, put word out via my communications liaison Sandy Sarr, and posted a Craigslist ad… but a week had passed and my show exhibition was drawing closer so I thought I’d need to wait until I could ask my agricultural colleagues back in Iowa. And then Clare came into the room, we chatted, she said she’d see what she could do, and a couple of days later, she had done it! She had found two wooden pig boards for me that were the dimensions I had been looking for from another LSU site and said they were sufficiently used as to be destined for the scrap heap, so this was a much better use for them.

I happily adopted them both and gave them a light sanding and heavy cleaning. For the first composition I had in mind, the slightly smaller and more “standard” board worked better, so that’s what I went with! I would like to photograph it again when I get back home and have access to a large white background, but this image will do for now.

This is Seeing Double, a mixed media relief including Dremel counter relief, QuickCure Clay, PVP Prep Solution (betadine), and acrylic on a used pig board / sorting panel, 29.75x19.25x1.25”, 2022.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 6 Process

Here are process photos from Crèche Chic!

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LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 6

As I may have shared before, I have met a bunch of amazing animals while here and there are a handful with whom I’ve really connected. This little fellow tops the list - you may recognize this brown thrasher from Wild Card, but here he is in his natural color palette and two different poses! I was fortunate enough to get to see pretty much his entire journey at the vet school in ZooMed’s wildlife hospital - from coming in as an abandoned nestling whose two siblings didn’t make it to his fledging and becoming a young adult, to his release! I will share his release photos in a different post.

The whole background is non-traditional veterinary media - namely, herbal treatments from Integrative Medicine! They created a really cool surface but were water-soluble and organic so I sealed over them several times with acrylic medium before painting the baby birds.

This is Crèche Chic, a mixed media painting including Integrative Medicine’s Jing Tang Herbal Concentrated Red Lung and Concentrated Prostate Invigorator and acrylic on panel, 18x24x1.5”, 2022.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 5

This is actually the first piece I began here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine! I never know how to properly answer people as to how long a piece of artwork takes to finish, as my optimal process involves working on several different pieces simultaneously. If you count start to finish, I worked on it for a month and five days - however, there were a number of days in there that I didn’t touch this piece or only worked on it for a couple of hours…

The subject in this piece is a three-day-old baby Nubian goat; she was fully healthy but was brought in to accompany her brother who was failing to thrive and unfortunately didn’t make it.

Singularity, mixed media including Clinical Pathology’s Diff-Quik Eosin Y stain, Clinical Skills' fluorescein, Histology’s light green stain, and acrylic on basswood panel, 12x24x1.5”, 2022.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 4

This painting originated in the Epidemiology Department here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine! I met with a number of researchers in various departments, but Dr. Rebecca Christofferson’s lab offered me a very cool substrate that I wanted to use: mosquito ovipositioning paper! This paper, as its name suggests, is used by researchers to hatch mosquito eggs for research purposes. It’s an interestingly textured paper, and it has aqua lines on it in two configurations; on each 15x10” piece of paper, there are either two vertical lines 1” and 1.25” inside the border, or there is one line 4” inside (or 6”, depending on your perspective).

I asked what purpose the lines serve (they clearly serve some purpose, whether that be for researchers or as an artifact of the production process), and no one at LSU SVM has been able to tell me. I think that’s pretty funny, as it was my first question and the first question out of several of my artist friends’ mouths as well! Dr. Christofferson did just follow up with me to share the mosquito ovipositioning paper is apparently a repurposed seed germination paper, so I will try to follow that thread to see if I can figure out why the aqua lines exist!

As I shared in a previous journal, I took the photos of these mosquitoes myself. This composition includes two female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, both after a bovine blood meal, and three mosquito eggs to scale with the mosquito depictions. I purposefully integrated cool tones and aqua shadows to tie in the aqua margin lines.

This is Hosts, acrylic on mosquito ovipositioning paper, 15x10”, 2022. It will be window-matted with an overlay of mosquito netting from the epidemiology lab on top of the matboard and framed. I’ll be assembling the frame with the help of my host Rob Carpenter, so I’m excited to see how it all comes together!

My Upcoming LSU Vet Med Artist in Residence Exhibition Details!

The show poster and details have been released for my LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Artist in Residence exhibition, co-sponsored by the LSU School of Art! Here’s the LSU College of Art & Design’s event page for it, and below is a copy of the image and text.

Artist-in-Residence, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine
July 25, 2022 5:30-7:30 p.m.
LSU Vet Med Library
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine presents the art of Shelby Prindaville, and invites you to a lecture and reception featuring our inaugural Artist-in Residence. The lecture, exhibition opening, and artist’s reception will be at LSU Vet Med Library and is co-sponsored by LSU School of Art.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 3 Process

Here are process photos from Lineage! I first used the debudding tool on a plain basswood panel and then painted over it with white acrylic to make the background. Then I drew out the goat contour, and before I even drew the eyes or snout I then went over the area she’d be painted with molding paste several times to fill in the depressions. I added the eyes and snout and a couple more layers of molding paste, and then began painting!

When I paint, the order of what I do can change depending on the textures involved; I always aim to paint further away first and then foreground last, but in this painting’s case I left the eyes and ears for last as I was painting the goat fur with synthetic bristle brushes. They gave the mark-making I was looking for, but their lack of precision meant that I wanted to get the fur mostly down before I addressed those more tightly detailed areas.

After I finished the painting, I varnished it, and then worked on the halter rope before gluing and clamping it onto the basswood panel.

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LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 4

Over the weekend, I had dinner with my good friend Dr. John Pojman and his wife and came into the studio and painted. The following week was mostly focused on my studio practice as well, but there were a few interesting events! The first is that some anatomy folks asked to meet with me, and then after I showed them my studio and its current state of affairs, I followed them back to their lab and nosed around. They had a veritable stockpile of bones, as you might imagine, and also lent me some stain powders which I am excited to explore, though a bit less so now that the methylene blue counter stain has revealed itself to be unstable in coloration… but I still want to see what these others can do, and there’s one made out of lichens that sounds pretty promising.

After sleeping on our conversation, I went back and borrowed a giant bucket full of duplicate bones, as with permission from the school I decided I would create a small body of ceramics with bone impressions for texture. I had been so convinced I would not do ceramics down here though that I didn’t bring any tools along. Thank goodness I got the Morningside University Ver Steeg grant, as I might’ve otherwise balked at the cost of buying new ones! I went to the primary pottery supply store in Baton Rouge and picked up tools, a 25lb bag of white stoneware, and three glazes which I hope to combine together in a way that both accentuates the texture while being reminiscent of bone. We’ll see - I don’t really have time to troubleshoot any part of the glazing, so que será, será.

On Thursday evening, my former graduate faculty member and mentor Kelli Kelley hosted a shindig at her house for me to introduce me to some of her recent MFA alumni and current MFA students. It was really kind of them all to spend this time with me, and I enjoyed seeing Kelli’s studio again - it’s perhaps my platonic ideal of studio. It’s big, has a lot of table space and an extremely high ceiling, and just generally cultivates an air of peaceful, creative energy.

After that gathering I made my way out to dinner with a new friend I made after moseying into Mo’s Art Supply - Emily Seba, a talented illustrator and prop designer who also manages this Mo’s.

The following weekend and beginning of the next week was spent busily crafting a small collection of pinch pots; I have to say that though my new tools are fine, I really miss my Garrity tools. (Buying more would take too long in shipping time though, so I made do with the instantly available ones from Southern Pottery Supply.) I learned that a lot of bones don’t really leave as much in the way of impressions as I’d hoped, but there were a few that served me quite well!