Interview with artist Shelby Fleming
Shelby Fleming is an artist living and working in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Shelby is a sculptor and performance artist whose work revolves around the body’s fragility and amazing resilience. She is not afraid to show its struggle as well as its beauty. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. More of Shelby’s work can be found at The Artist Collective in Rogers, Arkansas and at her website shelbylynnefleming.com.
AAS: Shelby, are you from Fayetteville originally?
SF: No, I grew up in Collinsville, Illinois 15 minutes east of Saint Louis. Four years ago, I moved to Fayetteville to attend the University of Arkansas School of Art and graduated with my Master of Fine Arts in July 2020. The Northwest Arkansas area really captivated me with its beauty, community, and expanding resources for the arts. I still live in Fayetteville and currently have a studio at Mount Sequoyah.
AAS: Talk more about your art training. You have done several Artist in Residence programs too.
SF: During my undergraduate at Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville (SIUE), sculpture became my primary focus. I loved that it occupied the same space as the viewer and could not be ignored. My Bachelor of Fine Arts mentor, Thad Duhigg, was a phenomenal instructor, he built up our skill set and made us own our conceptual topics. He pushed us to get our work out there, to build our resume, and by doing so we learned what the art scene was really like and where our work fit into it.
I was also fortunate to participate in the SIUE Sculpture on Campus Program. Over the course of three years, I created three site specific public sculptures for the university and assisted in the installation and de-installation of over 60 large scale public sculptures. We problem solved through design challenges and worked as a sculpture community.
When I attended U of A, the funding was insane!! A stipend, tuition waiver, and abundance of grants allowed me opportunities I thought would never be possible in my lifetime. I am extremely humble for those moments. It has made me see the art world more as a whole instead of an abstract concept. At Vermont Studio Center and Chautauqua School of Art I found a national and global community of artists and mentors I still stay in contact with. Travel Grants through the U of A School of Art and Graduate School allowed me to share my work at the International Sculpture Conference three years in a row. Graduate Project Grants gave me my first opportunity to curate exhibitions, in 2017 “Digital Disconnect” at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and in 2018 I was able to curate an exchange show and lecture series between the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Arkansas.
While at the U of A, I served as a Wood and Metal Shop Lead Monitor and was an Instructor of Construction Methods I, an intro to the sculpture class. The move to Arkansas also gave me the opportunity to work as a Contracted Preparatory Assistant for 21C Museum Hotels and The Momentary. I had always installed my own artwork up until this point and had never really considered the amount of work that goes into artwork preservation and transportation. It is a whole new level of intimacy when you are handling another artist’s work that also happens to be the museum’s investment. You got to see how the artist’s mind worked to construct the piece. And at the end of the day, you looked back at the installed exhibition, and you felt a little more connected to the artist.
Currently I am the Exhibits Technician at the Scott Family Amazeum, a children’s museum in Bentonville. I fix exhibits on the floor while building and designing new exhibits centered around STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics]. Right now, we are developing an exhibit based on reflections. This will be the first time the Amazeum has produced its very own exhibit from start to finish and will hopefully debut summer 2022.
AAS: You describe your studio practice as cross disciplinary with a focus on sculpture and performance art. How did this develop?
SF: I believe the future of art is cross disciplinary. I do not think artists have to be pinned down to one medium or one body of work for their entire life. This realization came when I was reading, “Naum Gabo,” by Natalie Sidlina, published by the TATE in 2012. Gabo constantly, throughout his career, worked between his drawings and his sculptural forms, each medium informing the other. It showed me you can think you have your practice defined, but those boundaries you set in your studio are set by you.
With this mindset, my sculptural practice has developed to include performance art and installation. Performance art is generally not the first medium that I go to when I am brainstorming a new piece. It usually develops as the piece develops. There may be a moment when I realize that the piece will not work as a static object, and to fully convey my idea it needs the body’s direct influence. My installation work is similar, it thrives on the viewer’s body being present with the artwork and in many cases the viewer’s presence is what finishes the installation through their interactions and movement around the curated space.
“I believe the future of art is cross disciplinary. I do not think artists have to be pinned down to one medium or one body of work for their entire life.”
AAS: Before we get into some of your specific pieces, I wanted to ask you about your most recent work that focuses on the human body and its fragility. Full disclosure, I spent my career in biomedical research and did a lot of cellular microscopy, which you have said inspires your work. So, I am quite interested. Your interpretations are not always beautiful but always intriguing. Why this focus?
SF: Yes, my work focuses on the body’s fragility and resilience as we face internal, external, and psychological factors. I was drawn to a cellular motif when I was considering how 37.2 trillion cells literally make us who we are. It is hard to fathom! Using scanned electron microscope images as a reference, a few of my pieces pay tribute to this dedicated system of cells, a few referencing cellular division and cellular bodies. However, there’s also the fragility of these structures when genetic disorders, old age, or illness settle into the body. I consider how myself and many others must adapt our lifestyles to compensate for abnormal genes. Living with scoliosis and chronic constipation I am very fortunate that they have become manageable with daily care.
And I totally agree. My work is not always “beautiful,” I often call it horrifyingly beautiful. Many of the works focus on the abject body, the internal body or the body that violates its own boundaries.
AAS: Do you find that creating these works is somewhat therapeutic?
SF: If anything, I think my work becomes therapeutic for the viewer. In many ways my work normalizes the grotesque by presenting it as an artform. Sharing my body’s experience helps other people feel like they are not alone in their complications.
AAS: You very recently created a large installation at the First Security Bank in Springdale titled Brittle. Would you talk about that work?
Brittle, fabric, plaster, monofilament, 144” x 240” x 120”
SF: The installation was apart of the exhibition “Yes and…” curated by Robin Atkinson, CEO of Interform (formally known as Arkansas Art and Fashion). The exhibition coincided with a few other exhibitions in downtown Springdale and with Interform’s annual runway event, this year titled, “Assembly”.
I have been wanting to make Brittle, for a while now. I had prototyped a few sample pieces 5 years ago and it took almost 10 hours to make 6 pieces by hand, it wasn’t feasible at the time. Once I saw the install space on the second floor of First Security Bank, I knew it was time to bring that piece to life. I had digital fabrication skills now and with the help of Illustrator and a CNC Laser, I cut out over 200 fabric shapes in just under 5 hours. After 2 days of plaster dipping, the pieces were ready to be installed. As I hung the pieces, I knew I wanted the viewer to be able to move in and out of the piece. With it being by the entry door I wanted it first to guide the viewer into the space.
The individual pieces hold a similar cellular motif as many of my previous works. I arranged the plaster pieces very close together to suggest that they had fractured apart, that at one point they may have all been connected. The movement of the piece also reminds me of the flow of the blood stream.
AAS: You created an earlier work titled Cellular Decay. It is quite a spectacular piece.
Cellular Decay (close-up), steel and foam, 126” x 66” x 42”
SF: Thank you! It was a challenge. My main goal with this piece was to see how far I could push the material and create tension. I wanted it to feel like a topographical biopsy floating, something that was a surprise as you rounded the corner of the gallery. This piece uses that cellular motif but also introduces color, which references how scanned electron microscope images go through a post editing process to become colorized. The colorization allows for topographical differences to show up, transforming a black and white flat cellular landscape into a vibrant image.
The cavities of the steel always made me think of a barren skeleton while the carved foam felt like the remaining life that was no longer functioning normally. I thought a lot about my family friend while I made this piece. He was one of the healthiest people I knew and was diagnosed with cancer. Within a year he could no longer walk and ultimately passed away.
Cellular Decay (close-up), steel and foam, 126” x 66” x 42”
AAS: Another work I really like is Cellular Division. It is a lit piece and really beautiful.
Cellular Division, steel, LED lights, pig gut, 25” x 48” x 13”
SF: For this piece I wanted to focus on the regenerative nature of the body. The fact that our body replaces itself with new sets of cells every 7-10 years is astonishing. As its name suggests I wanted to focus on creating a visual representation of cellular division. The steel in this piece acts as the cell walls while the small wires are stand-ins for genetic information in the process of being copied and split. Pig gut acted as the membrane holding everything together. Adding LED lights behind the form I was able to project the cast shadow of the smaller wires onto the back of the pig gut. The lights helped set the mood and metaphorically add life to the piece.
Cellular Division (close-up), steel, LED lights, pig gut, 25” x 48” x 13”
AAS: You did two pieces that symbolize the fragility of bone as we age. Would you talk about those pieces and how they were made?
Osteoporosis Chair, wood, 40” x 16” x 16”
SF: Osteoporosis Chair and Osteoporosis Ladder are from my series, “The Break Down,” which focuses on the body’s fragility. These two pieces focus on osteoporosis, which affects 3 million in the US yearly, a majority being women. With osteoporosis, new bone creation cannot keep up with old bone removal, leaving porus cavities in the bone.
I used the found objects of a chair and ladder as they are easily recognized as supportive objects for the body, just as bones are. We expect both to fulfill their function. Carving down the objects with an angle grinder and a Dremel tool, I start to take that supportive nature away from the object and add tension between the viewer and the object. There’s doubt in whether the object will stay together, let alone support the viewer. In this exchange I hope to give the viewer the same feeling of insecurity that a person with osteoporosis might have in their everyday life. Depending on my audience I have found anyone 40 and older really resonates with these pieces. I have had multiple people come up to me at exhibitions and tell me “I’m drinking my milk and taking my calcium!” I think the most striking example however was the comment from a woman living with osteoporosis: “I broke my rib just like that, just by bending over.” We only get one body, one vehicle to experience the world and I find it terrifying to live in fear of our body’s potential failure.
Osteoporosis Ladder, wood, 22.25” x 15.5” x 19”
AAS: Then there is Gut Feeling, an expansive installation you did at the University of Arkansas Sculpture Gallery in 2020. That was quite a monumental work and I wish I had been able to see it in person.
Gut Feeling, steel, plastic, acrylic, 180” x 242” x 405”
SR: Gut Feeling, was my thesis exhibition for my MFA, a year in the making. Three days before my installation date campus went into lockdown for COVID-19, everything went remote, and my exhibition and graduation date was in limbo for months. In June of 2020 I was finally able to install and document my work, but no one was allowed to enter the building to see the exhibition without prior approval. I was devastated, an exhibit that was all about the viewer’s body and experience was reduced to images and a poor-quality Zoom tour. However unforeseeable the whole situation was, I could not help but see the irony of it all. An exhibit that was about the viewer’s body and collective experiences was also playing out on a global scale in the form of COVID-19. We were having to monitor our bodies for warning signs for the safety of others. The body became everyone’s focal point.
The curation of this exhibit was key to guiding the viewer and making them feel included. An implied line from form to form moved the viewer around the space and a soft red light on the walls assisted with the movement, implying that the form was moving behind the walls, breaking the boundaries of the gallery’s body. Gut Feeling consisted of four Segments and an interactive Cave. Segment 1 and Segment 2 also asked the question does location and space change how we perceive artwork? Segment 3 and Segment 4 referenced the tension and anxiety associated with the abject body and our relationship to mortality. The Cave created a moment where the viewer could engage in an interaction that is removed from judgement or voyeurism.
Artwork in public spaces creates what I call “Spontaneous Interactions”, it invades the space of an unexpected viewer. I think that I am always looking for a spontaneous interaction even when my work is in a gallery space. I want it to be unexpected and loud.
Somewhere Between Chaos and Serenity, steel, plastic, acrylic, 144” x 240” x 240”
One year after Gut Feeling, came my solo exhibition, Somewhere Between Chaos and Serenity, at Mount Sequoyah. I felt like I finally had some closure for my thesis show and graduation. At last people were able to see my work. I thought of the journey I had gone through with Gut Feeling, and most of it had been at home anxiously waiting in quarantine. In the exhibit I wanted to capture a home’s role of feeling safe and secure while also depicting the invasive feeling of dread and constriction that now occupied my home.
AAS: Let’s talk about your performance piece, Self-Punishment. What was the process around that production?
Self-Punishment, steel, 4’ x 8’
SF: Like many of my other performance pieces it developed organically as I worked on it. I was excited to use a CNC plasma cutter for the first time and I experimented on cutting one continuous organic line on a full 4-foot by 8-foot sheet of steel. It was challenging as the heat kept springing up the metal, but after a few restarts it was successful. I then started to shape the steel with an anvil and hammer, transforming the surface into a more organic form.
My scoliosis was not happy, and I was angry, why was it acting up? Oh, I had been sitting on an anvil hammering steel for three weeks. It was a real moment when I saw the connection between by body and my sculpture practice. I saw the impact my body had on the piece and the impact it had on me in return. It felt like a conversation, and I thought this is it. I constructed a back harness and used wires to connect myself to the piece. It became an hour and fifteen-minute performance. When I moved the whole piece moved and as I hammered on the steel form, I could feel the vibrations through the wire. One viewer commented, “it sounded like the bells of hell,” as the steel clanged off other strands and it dragged across the concrete. The performance put in perspective how restricted I feel sometimes in my body and its limitations, but also recognize that if I do not acknowledge and accommodate those limitations, I am ultimately unproductive.
AAS: Shelby, you have really been busy that last few years with solo shows and group exhibitions. What is next for you?
SF: Exciting things! I was recently picked up by The Artist Collective in Rogers, Arkansas and could not be more pleased. During their recent, “Art is Back,” opening I was able to meet all the other represented artists and I feel humbled to have my work shown alongside them. Osteoporosis Chair, Osteoporosis Ladder, and Consumption are currently on view there.
Gut Feeling: Segment 3 was selected for Walton Arts Center's first-ever regional art exhibition, "Our Art, Our Region, Our Time". The show opening is September 30 from 6-8 pm and runs through November 5. I installed my piece a few weeks ago and I am thrilled to have my work alongside so many heavy hitters. It will also be the first time Gut Feeling has been curated into a group show. I am excited to see everything come together.
I am also a part of the Emerge 3 program by Interform. The cohort consists of myself and 5 other designers. Throughout the 4-month program we will be honing our fashion designing skills through collaboration, training, and mentorship from regional and national creators. The result will be my very own wearable art fashion line consisting of 8-10 pieces that will walk the Northwest Arkansas runway in spring 2022. I am very humbled to be a part of such a diverse program with designers from across the globe each with unique design backgrounds. As a sculptor it has been challenging to branch out into textiles and wearables, but I am ecstatic to have my work directly engage with the body since it is all about the body.
