Here are process photos from Crèche Chic!
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 Journal 6
in Residencies
The next week began with my making some more progress in the studio and also taking some more reference images for future artwork. However, what felt like allergies flaring up on Monday and Tuesday began to seem more suspicious by Tuesday evening, and Wednesday morning I took an at-home COVID test which reflected a positive result. I have been around a large number of unmasked people both at the vet school and at the various art receptions I’ve been attending, so I wasn’t terribly surprised given how infectious this latest wave has been.
When I called in with the news, LSU policy dictated that I stay out of the provided studio until five days of symptoms had passed. This would normally be a bit problematic from a productivity standpoint but otherwise unremarkable, except that the housing I’ve been provided is marginal and without an escape to go to (the studio and restaurants/cafes/shops), it is a unrealistic place to ask a professional guest to isolate for days.
Below are a couple of photos of the totality of housing space I’ve been provided. My host is a very kind and gracious artist himself, and he thinks that it’s ideally used as a very short term weekend or week-long stay and that LSU Vet Med was already pushing it to ask me to stay there for two months. He shared with me that as an isolating unit he views it as effectively a jail cell or a cubicle, and that he agrees it is unreasonable to ask anyone to isolate within it. (The last photo is how I sleep as the floor is more comfortable than the cot, but I store the pad on the cot when not sleeping as it is impossible to get to the bathroom or exit otherwise.) As you can imagine, I try not to spend much waking time in this space; I just use it as a place to sleep and shower.
I therefore had to scramble to find a hotel or Airbnb on extremely short notice. I managed to find a viable place - a studio apartment with a kitchen - and had to personally outlay approximately $400 (the cheapest functional arrangement I could find on same-day notice) to stay there for the rest of the isolation period.
The LSU School of Veterinary Medicine is unwilling to pay for or even share the cost of this expenditure, which is very disappointing. For anyone considering doing this artist residency, I’d just warn you that any housing or COVID issues you face while here are at your own cost and that their standard for acceptable housing is marginal. Staying in this space already cost me more than I’m used to in residency food expenses due to not having a kitchen (meaning I can only eat prepared foods or microwave or refrigerated meals), so requiring that I fully carry my isolation expenses on top strikes me as unprofessional on the part of the LSU Vet Med artist residency program. I am hesitant to recommend this residency without sharing this issue as it has been an unexpected and pretty significant negative. But rounding it out, in almost all other aspects I have had a good experience and other more minor problems have all seemed like teething pains that would naturally occur as the inaugural artist.
Once my isolation period ended and I was able to access the studio again, I moved back into the above pictured space and picked up where I’d left off on my studio practice.
The Advocate Feature Article!
in Articles, Residencies
The Advocate writer Robin Miller wrote up a lovely feature article for The Advocate on me, “LSU Vet School hosts first-ever resident artist: Combines clinical labs to create art” which was digitally published yesterday! (It hasn’t yet come out in the print version - I think Robin mentioned it will be in the Saturday edition.) Below is just a screenshot of the intro, but you should definitely follow the link above and read the whole piece!
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 5 Process
And here are process pictures of Singularity from start to finish!
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 Process
Here are some in-progress images of Hosts! I had to almost exclusively use my two smallest brushes for the whole painting, which was tedious but ultimately worth the effort.
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 5
in Residencies
After I made the pinch pots, I refocused on some of the paintings I had in progress. I prioritized working on my mosquito painting, as since it’s a work on paper it will need to be framed, and framing it for the exhibition here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine would be more impactful if the timing allowed! I also continued to visit different areas - primarily large animal and wildlife - to see if any new patients might make their way into my work. I attended the release of a wild black vulture who I’d had a chance to observe several times through the healing process. Wildlife releases are such meaningful moments, and I don’t think I’d ever get tired of participating in them.
July 4th was a Monday, and though it was a federal holiday, captive animals still need food, water, clean habitats, and/or treatments! This meant that I was invited to take a look at several endangered Louisiana pine snakes while they were undergoing routine veterinary testing and care. Later that week, I attended the July exhibition reception at the Baton Rouge Gallery of four different members’ work.
That weekend, the Baton Rouge Orchid Society hosted their annual show and sale, and I oohed and aahed over the specimens on display and purchased several new-to-me orchids. The event was held at the LSU Burden Center, so I also wandered their outdoor gardens until the heat drove me back to the studio! Then that evening I attended the LSU Glassell Gallery’s Bloom opening reception in the downtown Shaw Center for the Arts.
It is really exciting to get to see a variety of contemporary artists exhibit work regularly; I love that Baton Rouge has a sufficiently large artistic population and gallery presence to provide the opportunity to attend this many receptions during my time here.
Below is a photo of a live oak outside of the Baton Rouge Gallery festooned in ferns, lichens, and just being its own little ecosystem - I absolutely adore these trees, even though I’m also allergic to them! They’re iconically southern and also remind me of my grad school days. Then all the subsequent images are from the orchid show and the Burden Center!
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.
Indiana University Kokomo's Biosphere Juried International Exhibition Photos
in Exhibitions
Indiana University Kokomo's Biosphere juried international exhibition is ending today! Here are some photos of my bas relief Surface on display. I offered the option of exhibiting it on the wall or on a pedestal, and they chose to emphasize the QCC relief by going the pedestal route.
Shelby Prindaville, group exhibition, Indiana University Kokomo, Biosphere, 2022, exhibition, exhibitions, international juried exhibition, Kokomo, Indiana, IN
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.
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!
The Advocate Press Coverage
in Articles, Residencies
The Advocate, Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, publicized my artist residency recently in their article “July 4 band concert and an artist-in-residence at LSU Vet School: the area arts and cultural scene” by staff writer Robin Miller on July 2, 2022! Here’s a link to the piece, and a screenshot of the first paragraph (though there’s more to the article).
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 3
The adorable Nigerian Dwarf goat model is named Morticia, and she came into the large animal area in need of a Caesarean section. While she has been waiting for her labor to commence, she posed for me. The ways in which humans and animals coexist in domesticated relationships were inspiration for this piece.
Lineage is a mixed media painting incorporating goat halter rope, debudding tool marks, and acrylic on panel, 13.5x13.5x1.5", 2022.
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 2 Process
As I mentioned in my first post about this painting, the coloration of the background comes from my novel usage of veterinary stains and medicine as art media, and I continued that color palette into the subject as well. However, there was a lot of trial and error in the creation of the background, and a cyan coloration that was produced ended up quickly going almost entirely fugitive (bleached out). I reinforced it with acrylic droplets as a final step, but as the painting continues to age, the background purple coloration is also beginning to fade. I may need to redo the whole background eventually, but right now I am adopting a wait-and-see approach!
This painting has already had a number of failed backgrounds, because two of the chemicals I tried to use for pigmentation clearly did not work from the start. The first I attempted was chlorhexidine, and the second was light green stain from Histology. “Wait a minute!” you might say to yourself. “Those chemicals are still listed in the mixed media!”
You’d be correct - I left them in because I kept sandwiching new chemicals between layers of acrylic medium, and I can’t be sure that some of those initial layers didn’t create the compositional effects that later resulted from the Diff-Quik methylene blue counter stain. That is the chemical that brought both the purple and strong cyan into to the background, but the cyan came from watering down or thinning out the stain and it began going fugitive quickly. The purple stuck around long enough that I thought it was permanent, but now it too is beginning to fade. I’ll continue to update you as to where this painting ends up, in terms of both aesthetics and process!
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 2
Here’s my second finished piece from my LSU Vet Med artist residency! I’m still mulling over the title - my current tentative selection is Wild Card, but I’m open to other suggestions.
I’ve met a lot of very cool animals here already, so this is high praise indeed - this is my favorite animal I’ve met thus far. ZooMed has a superstition they observe: you cannot name a wildlife patient, or its health will go downhill. This little fellow therefore doesn’t have a name, but he’s a real character. He has charisma and attitude in spades. When I arrived, he was a nestling and still had these “Einstein” feathers he’s rocking in the below image, but he’s now a fledgling and is getting closer to release every day!
I specifically chose the elongated landscape aspect ratio of this panel as mimicking the dimensions of the pathology slides. The coloration of the background comes from my novel usage of veterinary stains and medicine as art media, and I continued that color palette into the subject as well. However, as you’ll understand more clearly in the process post I’ll make soon, there was a lot of trial and error in the creation of the background, and a cyan coloration that was produced ended up quickly going almost entirely fugitive (bleached out). I reinforced it with acrylic droplets as a final step.
This is a mixed media painting of a wild brown thrasher nestling including Clinical Pathology's Diff-Quik methylene blue counter stain, Histology's light green stain, ZooMed's chlorhexidine antiseptic, and acrylic on basswood panel, 10x20x1.5", 2022.
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 3
in Residencies, Interviews, Vendors
The following weekend I went to a Baton Rouge Cactus & Succulent Society sale due to a member who passed away and left some of his collection and pottery to the society; in order to make the most of the event they also put some tropicals and leftover bromeliads from the previous weekend’s sale out for purchase as well. I picked up a few nice plants and a large quantity of small ceramic pots as they were selling them for absolutely rock bottom prices - I think I paid a bit less than $1/pot. I also stopped by an estate sale happening nearby and then had some Vietnamese, followed by stopping in at an Vinh Phat Oriental Market and getting lychee! I love fresh lychee (I was a bit sad they didn’t have any mangosteen though). I also visited a friend and neighbor of Sandy’s named Pat who is a big art collector, and it was fun to see her collection and her house in general - it was a beautiful home. She had invited local artist Joy McDonald over too. Her artwork is very playful!
The next work week (June 13-17) I spent more time with the farm animal folks and met a couple more cute goats, visited the wildlife areas (main building and flight cages) quite a few times, and observed some ophthalmology appointments. I also booked a session with epidemiology to photograph mosquitoes, specifically Aedes aegypti. This was a more involved process than I’d have thought, involving first feeding the females a blood meal, popping them into a freezer just to slow them down/stun them, and then tweezing them onto a metal tray partially perched upon ice, which I could move further away from the ice to thaw them out more or push towards the ice if they were getting too mobile. Aedes aegypti are dimorphic; the males only feed on nectar, so their abdomens are quite thin in comparison while their antennae are lusher than those of the female mosquito.
On Friday morning I was interviewed live on KADN News 15! I will post separately if I can find a video clip to share, but it was a short info piece about the fact that I’m the inaugural artist in residence at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, what that’s like, where I’m from, and when my residency exhibition and artist lecture will be occurring.
I also spent a good amount of time in the studio, of course!
Below are photos of my documenting/participating in a red-shouldered hawk’s release, a social media post from the LSU Museum of Art advertising my wares, live mosquitoes on ice (really, even the ones that are upside down), and some anole sightings including a hitchhiker from Florida on a bromeliad, two anoles mating, and the smallest anole I’ve ever seen next to my pointer finger for scale.
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 1 Process
I tend to be pretty bad about taking process photos, but I’ve been trying to be more intentional about it for this residency! Here are several images of Fortification in progress, culminating in the finished artwork.
LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 1
I always aim to capture a sense of place or atmosphere in my residencies, and in this artist residency at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine I have decided to incorporate medicines, pathology and histology stains, as well as veterinary chemicals, tools, and resources into each of my pieces as art media. (I have no idea how archival some will be - particularly how lightfast and stable the pigmentation of the medicines, stains, and chemicals is - but the evolution of how the artworks age will be interesting to witness and document, too!)
As you may already know, I work on multiple pieces of artwork simultaneously, so the first piece I start isn’t always the first to finish. This piece is actually the second one I began! It is of a Mississippi kite which is a beautiful raptor, and there were three here upon my arrival - two wild kites and one that has been habituated as an ambassador or resident raptor. The depicted wild bird is in a defensive stress posture, trying to look as big as possible so as to protect itself from predators.
This artwork incorporates ZooMed's PVP Prep Solution: povidone-iodine 10% topical antiseptic (also known as Betadine) and Integrative Medicine's AcuZone smokeless moxa-rolls for both the background and feet. There’s also a bit of the Betadine on the eyes over a base of acrylic.
I have titled this piece Fortification, and it is a mixed media painting including the aforementioned veterinary materials as well as acrylic and cornstarch on basswood panel, 20x20x1.5”, 2022.