Morningside Student Designed the New Sioux City Garden Club Logo!

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Miriam Moore’s new Sioux City Garden Club logo design!

I love to partner with community organizations in art department coursework with beneficial, real-world projects. This semester, I agreed to host a design competition within our graphic design program for the Sioux City Garden Club! Their president, La Vone Sopher, reached out to me and we worked out a plan: students in Graphic Design I and II would submit logo designs, and the club would proffer a $50 first place (and use that logo) as well as a $25 second place prize.

Students in these two courses submitted 26 designs, and there were a lot of quality options for the garden club to choose from! The board winnowed it down to six, and had the club members vote to select their first and second place designs. Graphic design and history major Miriam Moore’s logo was the winner!

I like to take on these sorts of projects - even though it invariably adds to my workload - because students get to work with actual clients, the top designers receive compensation, and all students create portfolio pieces while the winner sees their work enter the community. It also raises both the winning artists’ and our art department’s visibility… particularly when we issue press releases about the successful conclusion of the partnership!

Here’s the Morningside University press release (complete with a quote from me), which was picked up by KWIT and a KTIV television interview.

Morningside's Class of 2023 Graduation!

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Me and one of our brand new alumni at the 2023 Morningside University graduation ceremony!

This was a special year for me, as this graduating class is the first I’ve had at Morningside University where I’ve seen them through from start to finish - it’s my fourth year here, too!

Graduation was on Saturday, May 13th, and it’s always heartwarming with a dusting of saudade. I’m excited to see my students continue to progress in their professional and personal lives, but it’s always a little sad not to have them around nearly as much as I’ve become accustomed to. New students will be arriving in the fall, though, so the cycle will begin again!

April 2023 Raku Copper-Glazed Ceramics

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I’m going to do a few different posts about my April 2023 raku workshop pieces because there’s a lot of good work to share. In this first one, I will review my copper-glazed pieces!

Below is a platter, which has some texture on its surface; I imprinted an equine femur into the clay body thanks to bones I was allowed to keep using from the LSU SVM anatomy lab. I first glazed it with White Crackle, then wiped the white crackle back down so that it stayed in the impressions, and also applied it to the rim. Then I glazed over the top with Copper Sand. I thought this would impact the coloration, but the white crackle (at least at that thickness) only really affected the sheen; where it was applied the glaze is glossy rather than matte. Though it’s not precisely what I envisioned, it’s a strong piece.

Next, we have a small, leaning vase. I chose to apply wax to the rim and throat. Then I glazed the exterior with Copper Sand, keeping in mind that the glaze doesn’t stick to the waxed areas. In the kiln the wax then burns off, allowing the unglazed clay body to carbon trap the smoke from the reduction afterwards. I was planning on staining the raw clay, but I ended up holding off as the variably smoky surface is interesting in its own right. I need to actually decide, as I will want to wax the raw surface if I don’t stain it.

This is probably the biggest of my raku pieces this go-round. This vase vessel has Litho Carb on the inside and Copper Sands on the outside. (I really like Copper Sand as it’s pretty predictable in its behavior for me, which is a rarity when doing raku.) The interior lip has an abalone-like appearance!

Next, we have my “golden bowl.” This piece is glazed with Dakota Potter’s new Peacock on the interior, and once again uses Copper Sand on the exterior. One of my students kept hovering her hands above it and singing reverential “aaah” noises!

And below is my final copper raku piece of the workshop! This one is an oddball shape; I wanted to push myself to make some handbuilt, necked vessels and in doing so created this flora-inspired vessel. I glazed it with Litho Carb on the inside and Midnight Luster on the outside.

April 2023 Raku Workshop at Dakota Potters Supply

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Now that I’ve gotten the last workshop’s pieces published, I can tell you about the one I just finished! It took place on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Despite that late April date, the weather was decidedly more wintry - it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit with snow on the ground when we arrived, and I think it warmed up to around 40 by the time we left 8 hours later. Fortunately, the inside of the garage/storage room we glazed within got a bit warmer with the help of some space heaters, but I was still happy I wore my snow boots for extra warmth!

Possibly due to the weather, though, I had my best raku luck yet! I brought nine pieces, and all nine survived without even one crack - and my glaze results all fell on a scale of good to fantastic. I’ll share those with you shortly, but here are some photos from the workshop day itself first. In attendance from Morningside University was me, our ceramics instructor Paul Adamson, alumna Deb Allard and student Hannah Nichols.

My April 2022 Raku Ceramics

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I just completed another raku workshop this past weekend, and as I was looking through my files I realized I’ve not yet published the raku pieces I made at my last one in April 2022. Clearly I should do that before sharing my latest workshop photos and products!

On my April 2022 raku workshop, I wanted to try to carbonize various plant fronds or leaves onto the surface of my pieces. This was a complete experiment, and it was mostly a failure. I tried a variety of ferns and tropicals out, and one after another, they burned away without leaving a trace. Here are some plates that I attempted to salvage after that didn’t work out. With the first, I pivoted to a sugar and horsehair application. With the second, I tried to use ferric chloride to stain the surface with plant leaves that weren’t carbonizing, but they just left those not-terribly-appealing ferric chloride splotches.

Once I realized those techniques were not working, I tried etching fern fronds onto a plate in a “baked potato” aluminum foil saggar firing; it kind of worked, but I think it’s underwhelming. Since none of those plant techniques were doing super well, I just put a litho carb copper glaze onto my final plate.

I also made a rounded crackle vessel and the glaze turned out really well, but the ceramic physically cracked due to thermal shock so it’s got that permanent asterisk associated with it.

I glazed this spherical vessel with copper glazes (Copper Sand is on the exterior and I think that’s Midnight Luster on the interior), and it came out looking like a little planet! This one’s a definite favorite.

And finally, the one plant piece that turned out beautifully and justified all the failures: this is another “baked potato” saggar firing, and the Muehlenbeckia axillaris vines I used carbonized perfectly into this vase’s surface.

I also lost a large platter-like vessel (it broke into quite a few pieces and was not salvageable) and had another plate fuse with a kiln brick and lose part of its bottom. I eventually recycled that broken platter-like piece in my rock tumbler!

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.)

UPROAR Magazine Cover Image and Feature!

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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.

My Artwork Illustrates a Chemical Review on Frontal Polymerization!

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“Frontal Polymerizations: From Chemical Perspectives to Macroscopic Properties and Applications” by Benjamin A. Suslick, Julie Hemmer, Brecklyn R. Groce, Katherine J. Stawiasz, Philippe H. Geubelle, Giulio Malucelli, Alberto Mariani, Jeffrey S. Moore, John A. Pojman, and Nancy R. Sottos, published by American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications on February 24, 2023, is a 62-page chemical review. My QuickCure Clay sculpture Catalyst illustrates Section 5.4.4. Frontally Polymerized Artwork in Figure 40 along with other QCC artists’ works.

The above article title links to the online review, and here’s the PDF version. Below is the relevant page!

Frontal Polymerizations: From Chemical Perspectives to Macroscopic Properties and Applications Section 5.4.4 with artwork illustration by Shelby Prindaville.

A Reminder to Check Out the SCAC's 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition

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The opening reception and awards ceremony of the Sioux City Art Center’s 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition was great! I enjoyed getting to meet some of the artists and seeing their family and friends celebrate their accomplishments. If you’re in the area and haven’t yet checked it out, it is open through April 9, 2023.

Here’s some local press coverage which also highlights my role as the juror:

My juror statement, printed in the show brochure:

It was a pleasure to jury the Sioux City Art Center's 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition. Making artwork is a hallmark of the human experience; it is personal expression through creative risk-taking and problem-solving. Youth arts education has been linked to students' increased civic engagement, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, innovation, interdisciplinary synthesis, and motor skills. As viewers, I hope that - as I did - you see pieces in this show that bring you joy, challenge you, expand your horizons, and teach you something new.

To the artists: thank you for sharing your time and talent! Whether your work made it into this show or not, please continue to create and share your art; every piece has its own voice and power. In fact, the quality of submissions was so high that it was very hard to narrow them down to the pieces I eventually selected for display. I prioritized choosing a diversity of subject matter, art media, and techniques in 2D, relief, and 3D. I'm very excited to see the exhibition professionally installed, and I hope you are too!

My Upcoming Northwest Iowa Group Sierra Club Presentation!

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The Northwest Iowa Group Sierra Club invited me to give an artist lecture about my ecologically-focused studio practice at their upcoming Tuesday, March 28th meeting!

My presentation will be from 6-7pm with a Q&A and reception afterwards, as a small selection of my paintings and 100% wild, site-specific ceramics will be on display and I will offer prints, greeting cards, and magnets for sale. My friend and colleague Terri McGaffin will be giving my introduction and helped organize this event along with Jeanne Bockholt. I’m excited to share and discuss my work with this environmental conservation organization!

This event will be held at the First Unitarian Church located at 2508 Jackson St in Sioux City, IA. This programming is free and the public is encouraged to attend. 

(If you’re available earlier, they’ll be hosting a potluck from 5-6pm as well in the basement - I’ll be there too!)

My 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics

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After I made my 100% wild, site-specific Whiterock Conservancy ceramic collection entitled 41.816, -94.646 Ceramics, I knew I wanted to add other geographic coordinates to my oeuvre. Upon discussing this wish with family and friends, my father suggested that I might be able to get some wild clay from the brick plant Cloud Ceramics in my hometown of Concordia, Kansas. We brainstormed different supplies of ash for me to create custom ash glazes with, and settled on ash from my parents’ Republican River Valley firewood and the local Cloud County landfill (they burn organics like fallen tree limbs).

Several calls and trips my dad took to fetch the requisite media later, I had two different colors of native clay as well as the two aforementioned sources of ash. The clay from the brick plant arrived in dry chunks, and it had a lot of rocks and different densities of clays embedded in the pieces. After trying a couple of other methods (sifting and straining), I ended up going back to my tried-and-true, low-tech solution for cleaning the clay: meticulously smushing little pieces of it by hand to remove the debris and equalize consistencies.

I began working on this series in late November. I had a deadline of mid-February if I wanted to include 100% site-specific ceramics in my solo show in the Frank Carlson Design Room. That’s a turnaround of less than three months! I tasked my studio assistant work study students with helping me clean the clay, which helped speed up the process. I also tried to keep the pieces relatively small to maximize the number of pieces I’d be able to complete.

Here are some photos of the process!

As you can see above, after we cleaned the clay I handbuilt 30 ceramic pieces (15 out of each clay color) and bisque fired them. I then separated them into two different firings: half went into a cone 8 electric kiln firing and half went into a cone 9 gas reduction firing. After sifting the ash and removing all the larger chunks, I created 9 different custom ash glazes: 8 using all possible combinations of yellow clay, grey clay, landfill ash, and fireplace ash in 1:3 ratios, and 1 hybrid glaze with 1:1:1:1 proportions of each. I wasn’t sure what any of the glazes would look like, so I ensured each color of clay and kiln setting had the full range of options and asked my work study students to take copious notes so that we could learn from the results.

Here are my 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics! I managed to finish these in time to include in my Frank Carlson Design Room solo show. I like them all, but I am particularly in love with the ones that came out of the cone 9 gas reduction firing. I’ve only fired a few times in gas kilns so far, and this is the first time I’ve gotten really good reduction - it’s gorgeous! I like them so much that I want to make more (and larger) pieces to add into this collection, and glaze with a little more intention now that I know what the custom glazes I created will do. The clay cleaning process is tedious enough that there is a limit to how long I’ll want to keep working with each wild batch of clay, but my interest hasn’t waned in the Concordia series yet.

NC State University Honors Philosophy Seminar Guest Lecture

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I’ve had a great time so far at my North Carolina State University visit; I’ve already participated in an honors lunch, the moral leadership panel, and an honors dinner with students. Today I'll be guest lecturing in NC State University's honors philosophy seminar HON 355 Feelings of/from Technology: Analog Bodies in Digital Spaces on art, technology, and the New Aesthetic!

If you’re interested, here’s the course description: “While we live in a Digital Age, we have only begun to understand its full significance. What new possibilities arise in a virtualized future? Can we escape scarcity, this planet, even death? What problems might our technologies solve? Modern technologies also raise new existential challenges: Why has the increased prosperity that technologies provide been met with seemingly impoverished and unhappy lives, loneliness, and alienation? How does technology mediate our sense of identity and the relations we have with society, nature, and ourselves? This course will explore the phenomenology of technological life - that is, the descriptive study aimed at looking at the relations between humans and our world, a technologically-mediated world. We will use this experiential and descriptive approach to consider the moral dimensions and psychological and sociological consequences of digital and emerging technologies, especially information and communications technologies (ICTs) like the internet and social media.”

I'm a Moral Leadership in Nontraditional Spaces Panelist at NC State University!

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I was generously invited to fly out this week to NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, to serve as a Moral Leadership in Nontraditional Spaces panelist for their Honors Village and Forum.

They believe that my interdisciplinary, ecologically-focused artwork and professional practices embody moral leadership, but that many people don’t necessarily think of people like me first when conceptualizing or discussing moral leadership - hence the “nontraditional spaces.” I’m excited to see where our discussions and Q&A take us!

The dates I was asked to attend just happened to line up with Morningside’s spring break, so while all the panel activities are happening today (Monday, March 6th), I’ll also be a guest participant in an honors philosophy course later on in the week and plan to explore Raleigh, too, before returning home!

An advert from NC State University promoting Shelby Prindaville’s Moral Leadership in Nontraditional Spaces Panel held for their Honors Village and Forum

Concordia High School Pause PAWS Speaker Event and Radio Interview

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Below is the YouTube video of my speech given on Friday, February 17, 2023 in the Pause PAWS notable alumni speaker series at Concordia High School (CHS), and here’s a link to our KNCK radio interview, embedded into the NCK Today article, “Professional Artist and Educator Shelby Prindaville Presents to Concordia High School Students.” My solo show in the Frank Carlson Design Room is in connection with this speaker event.

I wasn’t expecting to receive any gifts, so when the CHS Student Council President Jenna McFadden presented me with a framed honorary letter with an explanatory plaque at the end of my speech (see the photo in the NCK Today article image below), I was surprised and humbled! I had a great time connecting with the CHS student body, got to see some great student artwork (one such talented artist is Daegan DeGraff - check out her Facebook artist page!), and really appreciated getting to work with Brandt Hutchinson and his colleagues in this community service.

NCK Today Coverage of Solo Show and Guest Speaker Event

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Screenshot of the NCK Today press coverage.

I grew up in Concordia, Kansas, and attended high school at Concordia High School (CHS). Recently, CHS Career and Community Coordinator Brandt Hutchinson reached out and invited me to join their notable alumni speaker series called Pause PAWS.

I agreed as long as we arranged for an exhibition of my artwork at the same time; if I’m going to be speaking about my career as a professional artist, it is important to me that the audience has a chance to see my artwork firsthand. Brandt immediately coordinated with the Frank Carlson Library to host a solo show in the Frank Carlson Design Room.

The show installation, opening reception, and lecture are all coming up this week! Here’s the first piece of press about it, via NCK Today. As the article shares, “Shelby will be speaking to current Concordia High School students from 9 am to 9:30 am on Thursday, February 16th in the historic CHS Auditorium.  The presentation will be live-streamed for the general public by Chris Stiles' high school video production team on their YouTube channel, USD 333 Media Productions.

The Frank Carlson Library will be hosting Shelby's art exhibit from February 17th to March 3rd.  The public is welcome to meet the artist by attending the opening reception for the exhibit from 5 pm to 6 pm on Thursday, February 16th at the Frank Carlson Library.”

Haemanthus Deformis

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I like growing South African and Namibian bulbs. There are some commonly grown ones you’ve almost certainly encountered - amaryllis, clivia, ledebouria, oxalis - and types that are rarer. The genus haemanthus is one of my favorite of these geophytes, though I keep a variety and am quite drawn to ledebouria as well.

Within the genus of haemanthus, I started with the moderately common Haemanthus pauculifolius a few years ago (though I ordered Haemanthus albiflos from Glasshouse Works, but they’re very similar and easily confused so they must have mislabeled their specimens), and I was pretty quickly charmed. I added three rarer species from Shire Bulbs to my roster last year: Haemanthus crispus, Haemanthus humilis subsp. hirsutus, and Haemanthus deformis.

This winter, all four of my haemanthus species are doing well, but my two Haemanthus deformis bulbs have been a particular delight to watch as they’ve settled in and are now growing mature leaves for the first time with me. H. deformis leaves are showstoppers! They have a kind of alien quality to their size and growth habit - you can already see the appeal in the photos below, but the leaves should get even bigger and more tightly flush to the surface with age. The first image is how the bulbs arrived in December 2021 after I’d potted them, and the second two images are of them this winter - with some surrounding plants included to provide a sense of scale in the second photo. (The white marks on the leaves are just mineral deposits from watering.) You can see that I already needed to pot them up again this fall.

Jurying the SCAC's 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition

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I was asked to jury the Sioux City Art Center’s 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition. Serving as a juror or judge is always an honor, and I love getting to see what young artists are creating! I judged the entries a couple of day ago, and I look forward to the awards ceremony next month.

From the Sioux City Art Center: “Celebrating Youth Art Month, the Sioux City Art Center will feature its 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition from February 26 – April 9, 2023. This year’s exhibition features work by middle school students and is juried by Morningside University professor Shelby Prindaville. Youth Art Month is an annual, nation-wide observance celebrating art education for children and encourages public support for quality school art programs. Created in 1961, YAM began as Children’s Art Month for the purpose of emphasizing the value of all children participating in art.

The reception for Youth Art Month will be on Sunday, February 26, 2023, from 1:30 – 3:00pm. Presentation of awards will take place at 2:00pm.”

New Artwork: Earth Measurer

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An in-progress photo showing my contour drawing which underpins the finished painting!

I made the acquaintance of this inchworm at Whiterock Conservancy, and began the contour drawing over a year ago. I picked it back up this winter break!

The title of the piece, Earth Measurer, is the English translation of the Ancient-Greek-derived “geometer.” Geometridae is the scientific name for the family of caterpillars (and moths) that make use of the distinctive method of locomotion that is not only described in the family’s scientific name but also in many of their common names: inchworm, spanworm, looper, and measuring worm.

After spending a lot of time really looking at inchworm anatomy and learning terminology (FYI, they have true legs and prolegs), I am again impressed with the variety and richness of animal forms in the world; there’s plenty of alien to explore right here. This past summer, while painting mosquitoes from LSU Vet Med’s epidemiology department, I was surprised by how hairy they are upon examination. Similarly, on this so-called hairless caterpillar, there’s still a fair amount of hair, called setae! I included it in the painting as well, though you’ve got to get close to the painting or zoom in quite a bit to see it.

This is Earth Measurer, acrylic on basswood panel, 6x12x1.5”, 2023.