May 9 through June 30
The Stone Ridge Library is happy to present Paintings and Printmaking: The Art of Lora Shelley as our May/June Art Exhibit. This show will open Tuesday, May 9 and run through June 30. There will be an Artist’s reception including a printmaking demonstration, May 27, from 1-3pm in the Library Activity Room and light refreshments will be served. The demonstration will start at 2pm.
Lora Shelley got her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Shelley’s works delve into the artist’s inner world –a rich dream-scape of an empath. Featuring figurative narratives with an emphasis on the human /animal connection. Sometimes dark and sometimes playful, Lora’s figurative works give a nod to her influences: Nolde, Munch, Gauguin, Kollwitz, Alice Neel, Bonnard, Van Gogh, Klimt etc. etc. Lora’s original love of painting and printmaking has expanded over the years to include stoneware clay. Carrying over her unique style into 3D works. As with her paintings and prints, they are all hand-built and hand-painted. Fired to cone 6. And for some reason featuring many bears!
At RISD Lora was deeply influenced by her residency in Rome with RISD’s European Honors Program. Lora’s work has been exhibited and is in private collections worldwide — residing in Australia, Africa, Germany, Italy and France. The Art in Embassies Program selected Lora’s work for exhibition in Lilongwe, Malawi – 2001-3, then again in 2004-7 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa. Her work was then purchased by the seated American Ambassador.
Locally, Shelley’s work has graced the covers of — The Valley Table, The Country and Abroad and Chronogram. Featured Artist in the Catskill Mountain Region Guide (July 2005). Nationally in Decor Magazine several times as well as Art Business News. Always experimenting — In 2017 Lora took on a yearlong project, The Year of the Cat – A Charley a Day – a studio exercise in which she painted her cat, Charley everyday (consecutively!). Culminating in a series of 365 plus paintings of her beautiful black and white rescue cat wrapping around the walls of The Wired Gallery (High Falls, NY) in a solo exhibition (June 2018) celebrating the completion of this project. Each piece is a finished full color mixed media painting/drawing on the backside of cereal box panels (saved from the recycle bin of family and friends!) Shelley refers to this project as a lesson in perseverance and meditation/ therapy through art.