Mary Michael Shelley

Mary Michael Shelley
Mary Shelley (born 1950 in Doylestown, Pa) is an American folk artist with no formal visual art training. Her art work has variously been described as naïve, primitive or self-taught. She graduated from Cornell University in 1972 with a degree in English and Creative Writing, and has lived her entire adult life in Ithaca, NY. She began making her painted low relief woodcarvings in 1974, after her father sent her a painted woodcarving (inspired by the art work of Mario Sanchez, Key West, Florida) that he made of Shelley as a child at the family farm. Shelley worked as a sign painter and carpenter from 1973 to 1990, and learning these trades helped her to develop woodworking and design skills important to her evolution into a visual artist.
Her work was shown at the Jay Johnson Folk Heritage Gallery from 1976 through 1990 when the gallery closed. From the start of her career until 2008, she has produced upwards of 2000 painted and carved wooden reliefs.
Shelley calls her work a “picture story” or “picture diary”. Many of her pieces are concerned with narrative, the telling of a story, the recording of an event. Shelley plays with metaphor, using cows and waitresses as stand-ins for her life experiences and feelings as a woman. Her work frequently contains veiled social commentary. She tends to work in series, the major among these being her diner, farm, outdoor, animal and dream series.
Work in permanent collections
Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)
The John Judkin Memorial, American Museum in Britain, (Bath, England)
American Folk Art Museum (New York City, NY)
The High Museum (Atlanta, GA)
Fenimore Art Museum (Cooperstown, NY)
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC)
Women’s Rights National Historical Park (Seneca Falls, NY)
Anthony Petullo Art Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art (Milwaukee, WI)
Absolut Vodka Art Collection
World of Coca Cola
References
Quotation of Gerard C. Wertkin, in “Ithacan’s Art earns her trip to Olympics” AP Syndicated story in the Syracuse Herald American, July 7, 1996
Bishop, Robert and Weissman, Judith Reiter. The Knopf Collectors’ Guides to American Antiques: Folk Art. Knopf. 1983
Gilbert, Rose Bennett. “Carving her Niche”. County Almanac. Fall 2004.
Johnson, Jay and Ketchum, William C. Jr. American Folk Art of the Twentieth Century. Rizzoli International Publications Press. 1983
Kaminsky, Marty. “Every Carving Tells a Story”, Highlights for Children, May 2004.
Ketchum, William C. Jr. All-American Folk Arts and Crafts. Rizzoli. 1986
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Let it Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection. University Press of Mississippi. 2001
Lewis, Richard W. Absolut Book: the Absolut Vodka Advertising Story. Tuttle Publishing. 1996.
Nosanow, Barbara Shissler. More than Land or Sky, Art from Appalachia. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981.
Rosenak, Chuck and Jan. Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists. Abbeville Press. 1990.
External links
1950 births
Living people
Cornell University alumni
Folk artists
Sculptors from New York (state)
American women sculptors
21st-century American women artists
People from Doylestown, Pennsylvania