Ollie McSweeney, Contributing Writer
At the Martin-Mullen Gallery in the Fine Arts Building on campus, there is an art exhibition for Mary Michael Shelley that will be displayed until the 11th of October. Shelley’s work consists of multiple painted carvings in a variety of sizes depicting personal narrations and stories from her life. She is a self-taught folk artist based in Ithaca, New York and she has created around 3,000 pieces in her lifetime, starting from the early 1970s.
Shelley uses white pine wood and acrylic paint for her carvings. She spends most of her process designing and drawing up the work over painting and carving, deciding what colors to use based more on what looks nice and feels effective over color theory. She measures the wooden board, enlarges her drawing onto the board, and then begins carving. Her pieces range in size from 10” by 10” boards to 30” by 40” boards.
Shelley developed her style through practice and experience over the last 50 years, learning more about her own process by creating one piece after the next. She tends to work on multiple carvings at a time, and she does not have a favorite part of her artistic process. Her work consists of diners, farms, animals, and her view of upstate New York and rural Pennsylvanian life.
Common themes in her work include the chaos of life, and how to make peace with each other and live together. Shelley’s work is typically made in different series, although there are no complete series exhibited in the gallery. During the reception on the 25th of September, Shelley briefly touched upon her women in the wind series – one piece from which is exhibited, featuring a group of women holding on to trees while being swept up in a storm. She has been working on this series for the last eight years, and it is about the chaos of womanhood and what it’s like to be a woman.
For the piece that was chosen to represent the exhibition, Shelley explained that it was a spontaneous carving. She didn’t plan it out fully and went along with what inspired her in the moment as she was creating it. This piece depicts a herd of sheep flanked by two shepherds with bluebirds filling the sky. She started out with one small part, the sheep on the bottom right, and added more as she kept working. One board is the main sheep in the front, the next board is the field and the shepherds, and the final board is the sky, creating a three-layer piece.
Her art career began after her writing education at Cornell University, when her father sent her a carving piece that inspired her to take up her own visual work. She initially had a job where she made and designed signs, and a lot of the gold leaf used in her work is from that job. She never really considered herself to be a visual artist due to her educational background, but her experience in writing has made her visual storytelling incredibly effective and impactful. Her voice and vision are very clear in her work.
Shelley tables at the Ithaca Farmers Market on the weekends until 3pm where she sells her carvings. You can also follow her on Instagram at @folkartmary where she posts videos of her carving and painting process and photos of her artwork. Shelley has said that posting about her work has helped her learn more about her artistic process.
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