I'm pleased to announce I was awarded a 2022-23 Tulsa Artist Fellowship Integration Arts Award.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship deeply aligns with the core values of the George Kaiser Family
Foundation (founder of Tulsa Artist Fellowship), a visionary leader in cultural and civic development initiatives, will become a globally recognized model for mobilizing communities with the transformative power of art. Through generously awarding merit-based arts practice stipends, premiere working and living facilities, and access to industry leaders, TAF is fostering an equitable environment where a diverse and inclusive community of artists and arts-related workers have the opportunity to thrive creatively.
November 15, 2021
Hi Shelby,
September 10, 2021
Hello, Shelby! Thank you for submitting a project for Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s Fall 2021 Welcoming Session. We enthusiastically agree that Am I that Name? installation will meaningfully engage our creative community.
July 8, 2021
Thank you so much for submitting your exhibition proposal to Living Arts of Tulsa. Our selection committee has had numerous meetings slating the calendar and we are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to have a solo show in July of 2023.
May 28, 2021
Hello Shelby,
Thank you again for opening your studio to us today. I really enjoyed meeting you and talking to you about your work. I just got back into the office and I wanted to take a moment to follow-up with you about a few things we discussed:
-Our second meeting will be in Melton Gallery on June 17 at 3PM.
Tentative Dates:
-Exhibition dates: September 22-November 10, 2022
-Install: September 15-21st, 2022
-Deinstall: Nov. 11-15th
November 6, 2020
Dear Shelby,
Congratulations! On behalf of the Grants for Artists Committee for the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded OVAC’s Professional Basics Grant.
New Greenwood, LLC is pleased to inform you that your artistic expression "The Talk" (S.Head_01), "Tar Baby" (S.Head_03), "Death by a Thousand Cuts" (S.Head_05) was accepted into RELEASE ME, the Spirits of Greenwood Speak, anthology. Congratulations! Thank you for sharing your voice!
PUEBLO, Colo. (September 11, 2020) — A new exhibition is open at El Pueblo History Museum in the museum’s Community Gallery. Artist Shelby Head’s La Sierra highlights the decades-long struggle of the beneficiaries of the 1844 Sangre de Cristo Land Grant in the San Luis Valley to regain and maintain access to their inheritance: the rights to access food, water, grazing, and other resources vital to the economic and cultural stability of these communities in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The exhibition includes seven video oral histories with beneficiaries of the land grant, reflecting on the 50-year range war with the Taylor/Cielo Vista Ranch. It also includes artwork by land grant heirs Huberto Maestas and Carlos Sandoval and interpretive text.
“La Sierra tells a powerful story that resonates across southern Colorado,” said Alyssum Skjeie, director of El Pueblo History Museum. “We are excited to be able to bring this exhibition to Pueblo and share the art and voices that Shelby has collected during her residency at Adams State University.”
La Sierra’s run at El Pueblo History Museum will include a number of virtual or hybrid public programs, including with participants in the long land rights struggle engaged by Head for her project. “Working in active partnership with the community during the making of La Sierra, the exhibition captures moments of heartfelt and complex conversations I had the privilege of experiencing over the course of my residency,” said artist Shelby Head. “The participatory element of a socially engaged art practice is key, with the artworks created holding equal importance to the collaborative act of creating them.”
La Sierra
Open through November 14
El Pueblo History Museum, 301 N. Union Ave, Pueblo
Free admission in the Community Gallery
The 1,100 square foot Community Gallery is always free to visit and has housed exhibits including the Museum of Memory, Without Borders: Art Sín Fronteras, and The Bell Rings, about Pueblo’s historic Central-Centennial high school football rivalry. La Sierra complements the museum’s current Borderlands of Southern Colorado exhibit, fostering conversation on the often violent and complicated histories of land use, rights, and access.
March 4, 2020
Hi Shelby,
February 14, 2020
Dear Shelby Head,
On behalf of everyone involved in the selection process, we are honored to
award you a 2020-2021 Tulsa Artist Fellowship position pending a completed
background check and executed contract. Extending a heartfelt
congratulations. Your application and interview stood out amongst an
impressive national pool of over 1,200 candidates. The decision included a jury
of distinguished arts professionals and Fellowship stakeholders.
George Kaiser Family Foundation, a visionary leader in cultural and civic
development initiatives, established Tulsa Artist Fellowship to attract and retain
ambitious contemporary artists and arts workers in our great city. Tulsa Artist
Fellowship fosters an equitable environment where a diverse and inclusive
community of creative practitioners have the opportunity to thrive artistically.
This socially engaged institution, located within a thriving urban arts district,
provides Tulsa's residents with the unique privilege of participating in the
transformative power of art through public programming, outreach projects and
presentation experiences.
KRZA National Public Radio NPR affiliated station in Alamosa, Colorado - Mike Clifford interviews Shirley Romero Otero and Shelby Head about the upcoming exhibition titled La Sierra, January 14, 2020
ALAMOSA (January 6) – The 2020 exhibition titled La Sierra at the Cloyde Snook Gallery on the campus of Adams State University from January 13 through February 6.
An opening reception for the exhibition will be from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, and will include the grant heirs’ personal stories concerning the historic land rights to La Sierra.
For 150 years descendants of Mexican settlers in Costilla County, Colorado have claimed communal rights to graze livestock, hunt and fish, and gather firewood on La Sierra. The 1844 Sangre de Cristo Land Grant guaranteed these land rights to settlers in order to build their communities and to sustain future generations of families. The US government confirmed these rights in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
In 1960, North Carolina timber baron Jack Taylor purchased 77,500 acres of land on the mountain the community calls La Sierra. Taylor fenced off access to the mountain and hired gunmen to keep local residents out. He began a large-scale logging operation that threatened the health of the mountain tributaries, the sole water source for the community.
The Land Rights Council was formed in 1978 to fight for the rights to access food, water, grazing, and other resources vital to the economic and cultural stability of this agrarian community. A litigation battle began that lasted many decades involving four separate landowners.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SLV Social Practice Arts Resident comes to San Luis, CO
San Luis (October 1) - Visual artist Shelby Head is visiting San Luis and surrounding communities for an extended period of time to take part in preserving the history of the 1843 Sangre de Cristo Land Grant through community participation and art.
Working alongside with the Land Rights Council, Head will focus on collecting stories from the beneficiaries of the 1843 land grant issued under the Mexican land grant system. She will record through film, 7 grant heirs’ personal stories concerning the historic land rights to La Sierra. These stories will become large wall projections at an exhibition titled La Sierra at the Cloyde Snook Gallery on the campus of Adams State University in January 2020. The centerpiece for the exhibition is a 10-foot by 6-foot shrine designed and installed by San Luis sculptor, Huberto Maestas, from donations made by Costilla County residence. The shrine is dedicated to the spirit of La Sierra and to the generations of families who have used the mountain range for grazing, logging, wood, hunting and fishing. The exhibition will travel to universities and museums in Colorado before finding a permanent home in San Luis.
Participation from the community is highly encouraged. Residences of Costilla County are invited to donate items for the shrine from today through December 31, 2019. Donation drop-off is at the Land Rights Council building in San Luis. Suggested items donate: chokecherry jam, bischtoes, pinon, chicos, fava bean (dried), pretty bowls, osha (herbs), atole, red chili (ristra), candles, a variety of cloth (to cover the base), sage, Devon Pena corn, photocopies of photographs, etc… The shrine is large and a lot of items are needed.
April 10, 2019
Dear Shelby,
I am emailing to congratulate you as a $3,000 Artist Fellowship recipient for the 2019 fiscal year grant cycle.
April 10, 2019
Dear Shelby Head,
Congratulations! You have been accepted into Adams State University’s Social Practice Residency program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Grant.The faculty and students in Art, Theatre and Music are excited to meet you and looking forward to working with you.
Our Social Practice Arts Residency program supports artists as they create projects that involve our specific community. We invite you to get to know the residents of the San Luis Valley and invite locals to take part in the creation of your project. The goal of our program is to support the creativity of our diverse population and provide a new platform for citizens to make connections with one another and address the complex social issues of our region.
Your project was chosen for support because of the proposed focus on collecting stories from beneficiaries of the 1844 land grant from Mexico and Spain. We anticipate that you will record the personal stories involving the 50-year range war with the landowners of the Taylor/Cielo Vista Ranch. These stories will then be shared in an exhibition at the Cloyde Snook Gallery where you also plan to design and construct a shrine with the Costilla County land grant heirs.
We would like you to join us from September - December 2019. We will be in touch to make arrangements for your arrival in the next few weeks. Feel free to email Program Assistant, Isabel Rodriguez, for general questions. You may also contact Project Director, Leslie Macklin, if you have specific questions at lesliemacklin@adams.edu.
We can’t wait to meet you and experience the wonderful work you’ll make while here. Warm regards,
Leslie Macklin
Assistant Professor of Art - Adams State University AIR Program Manger
719-587-7822 – Office
lesliemacklin@adams.edu
April 9, 2019
Dear Shelby,
It’s my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected for a Vermont Studio Center residency. Our jurors have reviewed your work favorably out of a very competitive pool of applications, and we are delighted to offer you a space in our program.We have scheduled you for a 4-week residency during the residency session which begins 11/24/2019 and ends on 12/20/2019. Congratulations!
Based on the strength of your work, you have been awarded the following VSC Merit Grant and Community Service Exchange Award package.
March 1, 2019
Congratulations Shelby! On behalf of Sculpture Space’s Review Panel and Board of Directors, we are delighted to inform you that you have been selected as an Artist in Residence for 2020. Our guest panelists for the Review this year were Emily Puthoff, Associate Professor of Art SUNY New Paltz Sculpture Program, Audrey Taylor, Community Arts Education Coordinator MWPAI/Pratt School of Art and Jonathan Kirk, Sculptor and former Studio Manager of Sculpture Space.
Opening, Saturday, October 13, 6-9,
Alvarez Gallery, 96 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT 06901
An Infrastructure of Silence is a collection of works that confronts institutional racism in U.S. America and the interconnections of slavery, race, poverty, wealth, and segregation in the United States. As a citizen of this democracy and an artist with shameful ancestral roots in the institutions of slavery, I have a shared responsibility to help confront the divisive and persistent effects of institutionalized racism on all Americans.
The wallpaper and frames used as media throughout the collection reference my family’s racist history and the historic nightmare alliance between policy, the law, the pulpit, and the press who joined forces in colonial America to deepen perceived differences between ‘the races’. Racism has a lamentable staying power and continues to be used as a potent political and psychological tool in America today.
Throughout the exhibition, text is intertwined with the artwork. Using materials of association, each piece is a confrontation with racial disparities regarding wealth, housing, criminal justice and political power.
Frederick R. Mayer Art Center Phillips Exeter Academy
11 Tan Lane, Exeter, NH 03833
FEBRUARY 23-APRIL 21, 2018
RECEPTION: Friday, February 23, 5:30-7:30 pm | GALLERY TALK: Saturday, February 24, 10 am
Is feminism still a useful framework, a relic of history, or a roadmap for the future? How does feminism provide a way to take a critical stance in the world today, and what are its limitations? How can you ‘perform’ a feminist identity or point of view? Are you a feminist? Why, or why not?
Over 30 contemporary artists, working in media including silkscreen, watercolor, fiber arts, and video, explore feminism’s impact and potential, and create an opportunity to represent more diverse and inclusive feminisms.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Taylor Apostol, Teresa Ascencao, Rachelle Beaudoin, Jessica Caponigro, Jeanne Ciravolo, Ella Cooper, Elizabeth D'Amico, Elena Dahl, Lisa DeLoria Weinblatt, Kara Dunne, Nicole Foran, Ann Forbush, Raquel Fornasaro, Melissa General, Catherine Graffam, Katya Grokhovsky, SHELBY HEAD, Alex Hovet, Michael Hubbard, Barbara Kendrick, Eddie Lanieri, Gray Lyons, Ashley Normal, Lorna Ritz, Adele Sanborn, Deb Schmill, Rhonda Urdang, Ngoc-Tran Vu, Hanna Washburn, Sarah Bates Washburn, Tory Wright Lee, Wen Yu, and Alexandra Zevin.
November 1, 2017
Dear Shelby,
Congratulations! That Artist's Resource Trust, a fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation is delighted to award a grant of $5000.00 to you. The committee was impressed with the quality of your work and your intended use of the grant.
November 10, 2017
Shelby Head of Madison, CT has been awarded a fellowship by the Jentel Artist Residency Program. Jentel is located in a rural setting on a working cattle ranch in the Lower Piney Creek Valley approximately 20 miles southeast of Sheridan, Wyoming. Shelby will be among the award recipients focusing on their own creative projects at this working retreat for artists and writers. A panel of arts and literary professionals review samples of artwork and manuscripts before making final recommendations for residency awards.
During the four weeklong residency, Jentel provides communal spaces designated for research, recreation, food preparation, and dining. Each artist and writer is offered a private comfortably furnished accommodation and a light airy workspace. Each resident receives a stipend to help defray living expenses during the program. Here artists and writers experience unfettered time to allow for thoughtful reflection and meditation on the creative process in a setting that preserves the agricultural and historical integrity of the land.
The Jentel Artist Residency Program offers a spectacularly beautiful place to peacefully work and achieve personal artistic goals in a remarkable environment. The program residents enjoy interaction with peers and the extended community. For any artist in whatever media, protected time from the day-to-day necessities of living to examine and reflect upon work and the creative process is essential as a catalyst for artistic development. For more information, visit www.jentelarts.org.
Fabric of Cultures: Systems in the Making
Art Center, Queens College,
October 5 – December 15, 2017
Opening Reception: October 12 at 6pm
The multimedia Fabric of Cultures Exhibition at the Queens College Art Center brings together artists, designers, CUNY students, and the local community to reflect on cultural identity and diversity through dress, fabric and various media. Objects on display from designers Brunnelli Cucinelli, Antonio Marras, Cesare Attolini, Alabama Chanin, Tabii Just (Zero Waste), HVRMINN, and artists Shelby Head, Paula Gabriel, Lady McCrady, Claudio di Napoli and CUNY students will interact with each other in a dialogue of memory, migration, aesthetics, sustainability, and the preservation of local traditions.
Opening, Saturday, May 20th, 6-9, Alvarez Gallery, 96 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT 06901
Beyond Indifference is a collection of mixed media works assembled from decorative and domestic objects commonly associated with the “feminine”. Materials and medium, through personal association, evoke memory and emotion. The series is not a memorial but rather moves with the subject of misogyny and the questions of gender. The work is both a product of the changing worlds around it and an element of interaction with these worlds. The objects of the work are the objects of the worlds with which it is concerned. By incorporating materials of lived-experience – cookware, appliances, and décor – the work challenges a purist aesthetic hierarchy that privileges one set of materials over another based on gender association. This is an exhibition of history, of politics, and of lived life.
The artwork titled Power Figure uses the iconography of a Power Figure as inspiration and is the centerpiece for the series. Power Figure serves as the administrator of justice for the collection and attempts to drive away destructive forces believed to be the cause of individual ailments and broader social and political ills represented in the each of the eleven sculptures in the series. Selected for their association to women, fingernails, hair and herbs are stored in the belly of Power Figure to draw in the power of spirits. The medicinal combination is shielded by a piece of reflective surface that represents the ‘other world’ inhabited by the spirits of the dead who can peer through and see potential enemies. To evoke the spiritual force of the Power Figure, eleven knitting needles are driven into the figure and, as a result, uncover the sources of affliction contained in each sculpture. A small strip of stocking is cut from every sculpture in the series and attached to the base of one of the imbedded knitting needles in order to increase the spiritual powers. The clothes iron, winding cord and plug refer directly to the figure’s function to address issues concerning misogyny and gender. When brought to life, Power Figure has the power to heal, to protect, and even to punish.
Title: CONTEXT New York
When: Tuesday, May 3 - Sunday, May 8, 2016
Where: New York
The inaugural edition of CONTEXT New York will take place May 3 - 8, 2016 in Manhattan. The fair will join Art New York at Pier 94, located on the Hudson River at 12th Avenue at 55th Street. A VIP Private Preview will kick off art week in New York City on Tuesday, May 3 from 2-5pm, before Frieze's opening. CONTEXT New York and Art New York will be open to the general public, May 3 - 8. CONTEXT New York will provide collectors with a leading alternative fair to acquire important works of contemporary art. The Gallery will be exhibiting at the fair and featuring three artists (John J. Bedoya, Shelby Head and Jena Thomas) as well as showing a rotation of installations.
Shelby Head showing @ Art Palm Beach Art Fair
First View
Wednesday, January 20, 6pm – 7:30pm
Invitation only
Collectors’ Preview
Wednesday, January 20, 7:30pm – 10pm
With invitation or multi-day pass
Public Hours
Thursday, January 21, 12pm - 7pm
Friday, January 22, 12pm - 9pm
Saturday, January 23, 12pm - 7pm
Sunday, January 24, 12pm - 6pm
Location
Palm Beach County Convention Center
650 Okeechobee Boulevard
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
Opening, Saturday, October 17th, 6-9, Alvarez Gallery, 96 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT 06901
In Measured Line
Shelby Head's Innovative Minimalism at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery
STAMFORD, CT -- Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery is proud to announce new gallery artist Shelby Head's solo exhibition, In Measured Line.
In Measured Line is a series of work that has been conceived and created over the past four years. Head is influenced predominantly by the practicalities of minimalism as integrated with elements of light and architecture and balanced by her chosen medium: paper.
For the exhibition, the artist has reproduced the essence of architecture by reducing line and space to its simplest form. Using versatile, flexible, and ordinary paper as material throughout the series, intentionally necessitates the works' medium (noun) to become an action (verb): to paper over, to patch up, or to conceal.
The surface of Head's work is covered with a variety of off-white paper, creating a quiet contrast between shapes. The fragility and vulnerability of paper allows for chance to contribute to the overall surface composition; when the surface is damaged in the art-making process, an accidental mark is then covered up with a strip of paper, a pucker is cut out and resurfaced with a swatch, and a patch is added to counterbalance the cover up. These external forces of chance and circumstance allow for fresh discovery within each new composition.
LED lights are embedded behind the surface of each piece, and partially illuminate the space inside through a variety of breaks on the surface. These openings give a glimpse into a private and mostly hidden inner landscape. Light and, at times, material escape onto the two-dimensional surface, creating a dialogue between the flat plane and sculpture.
The more architectural components of the collection were, in part, inspired by the architecture in and around the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, close to the artist's home. This component does not necessarily ground the collection in a particular place, but rather it offers a contribution to historical reference in architecture and provides insight into the very material nature of construction.
In Measured Line invites the viewer to question the relationship between architecture and minimal abstraction, chance and intention in composition, interior and exterior space, two-dimensional art and sculpture, and the use of light as an element in art.
Marked by Line — Installation and New Work by Sculptor Shelby Head November 3 through December 19, 2014
The Paul Mellon Arts Center will stage an exhibition of new work by Connecticut sculptor Shelby Head titled Marked by Line, from November 3 through December 19. Opening Reception on Friday, November 7, at 5:30- 7:30 p.m. The Arts Center is located on the campus of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. The gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. when school is in session, and is free of charge.
Hilles Gallery, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT, Solo exhibition - August 2014 Opening reception: August 1, 2014 from 5-7
January 25 - March 8
Closing reception: March 8th, 5-7
A-Space Gallery, West Cove Studio/A-Space Gallery
30 Elm Street
West Haven, CT.
Gallery hours by chance or appointment - phone 203-500-0268
(approx 1 minute off I-95)
Easy access from I-95, to exit 44.
Turn onto Kimberly Ave towards West Haven.
Kimberly Ave. becomes Elm St.
Turn onto Water St (first left after first stoplight),
then immediate left into parking lot.
Entrance is at rear of building, up one flight of metal stairs.
January 2013 - One Man Show
Press Release:
City Gallery, 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Thursday – Sunday 12-4pm. Also by appointment. Free. www.city-gallery.org. 203-782-2489. Open Book, Shelby Head, January 3, 2013 – January 27, 2013. Reception, Saturday, January 12, 2-5pm. Snow Date, January 19, 2-5pm. For further information contact:info@city-gallery.org.
City Gallery would like to invite you to view the exhibit. Please come by the gallery Thursday through Sunday from 12-4 pm, or call for an appointment.
Head will also be available for questions or interviews. She can be contacted at:
Shelby Head, shelbyhead@gmail.com, 203-435-2939
Press Release:
Silvermine Art Center, New Members Exhibition: January 6 – February 17 2013
Opening Reception January 6th 2:00-4:00
Artist Talk:
Exhibiting Artists from the
New Members Show
Tuesday, January 22, 6:00pm
Artist talks are opportunities to get guided
tours of the exhibitions and meet and
interact with the artists.
The New Members Exhibition will showcase the works of five new Guild Artist members inducted in the spring and fall of 2012 representing a variety of media. The new members include: Mindy Green from Rowayton, CT – Painting; Shelby Head from Madison, CT – Sculpture; Heather Houston from New Milford, CT – Sculpture; Lara Ivanovic, from Larchmont, NY – Painting/Drawing; and Hank Paper from Hamden, CT – Photography.
Each year in the spring and fall, artists are selected, through a jurying process to become new members of the Silvermine Guild of Artists. The Silvermine Guild of Artists is a distinguished group of professional artists comprised of over 300 members who work in a wide array of media and are represented in museums, and prestigious private and corporate collections. Selection into the guild is based on several criteria such as creativity, uniqueness or timeliness, excellence of technique, compelling notion or idea, cultural or social relevance, professional presentation of work, clarity and continuity of style, and professional accomplishment.