Shelby Donnelly
Lecturer of Art (Painting and Drawing)
M.F.A. Temple University, Tyler School of Art
Biography
Shelby Donnelly is an interdisciplinary visual artist, educator, and business owner. Donnelly makes collages that are screen printed and sewn textiles, garments, and objects that are contextualized in videos, performances and installations. Her work stages dramas that come from observing humanity’s relationship with ritual, ceremony, and spirituality and how that plays out in everyday existence and the subconscious. Incorporating fragments from cultural sources (film, novels, news) and materials (fabric, paper) the collages are a visual response or a way of “materializing gestures” – making physical what it typically an action.
In 2019, Donnelly founded Wear to Wall, a clothing brand that combines her interest in textiles and materials into one-of-a kind and limited-edition art to wear. Donnelly has exhibited both internationally and nationally at International House Philadelphia’s Ibrahim Theater, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, The Barnes Foundation, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Haus der Kunst Museum. Donnelly was the 2014 recipient of the Independence Foundation Artist Fellowship and traveled to Morocco to co-curate an exhibition at TALIM. Donnelly attended artist residencies at the Cité de Internationale in Paris, France, Millay Artist Colony in New York, Soaring Gardens, and Second State Press in Pennsylvania. Donnelly holds a B.F.A in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis (2002) and a M.F.A in Material Studies from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2008). Shelby is currently part-time faculty at both Rutgers-Camden and University of the Arts. Shelby Donnelly lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Faculty Gallery
