Visual Artist Series
The Visual Artist Series is collaboratively organized and hosted by faculty and students. Funded by the Student Association through the Campus Arts Council, the series typically brings seven to nine artists to our campus every year. These artists give public lectures, workshops, demos and critiques. Artists from all media are represented in the series. They come from all over the U.S. and Canada and, from time-to-time, other countries.
Fall 2026
Shelby Shadwell, September 30, 2026
Shelby Shadwell is currently a professor of drawing in the Department of Visual Arts
at the University of Wyoming. Born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, Shelby received
his B.F.A. in 2003 from Washington University in St. Louis and his M.F.A. in 2006
from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Shadwell’s work consists of large-scale drawings and paintings of non-traditional imagery such as gut piles left over from big game hunts, space blankets used in emergency situations to stay warm, black plastic trash bags and pieces of black anthracite coal. The work may illicit feelings of disgust or revulsion and awe or ecstasy simultaneously due to the contrast between the vulgarity or ephemerality of the imagery juxtaposed with its meticulous, hyper-realistic rendering. Among other things, Shelby’s work allows viewers space to ask questions about low and high status in artistic subject matter and romantic tropes in historical and contemporary western art.
A two-time recipient of the Visual Arts Fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council, Shelby actively exhibits across the nation. His more recent exhibitions include LIKE AND SHARE IF YOU AGREE!!!, a solo show at the South Bend Museum of Art, DRAWN at Manifest Creative Research Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Drawing Discourse at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Shelby was awarded a solo exhibition at the APEX Space at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon in 2016, and his work is included in their permanent collection. For his research sabbatical from 2021–2022, Shelby accepted the Manifest Artist Residency Award, and he spent the year making new work at their gallery and collaborating on educational opportunities at their Drawing Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Shelby was recently honored with the Stone & Deguire Contemporary Art Award from the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis. Recent and upcoming solo exhibition venues include STRATA Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M.; the Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, N.Y.; IA&A at Hillyer in Washington D.C. and the Bradbury Art Museum in Jonesboro, Ark.
Mr. Shadwell will give a presentation via Zoom on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 6 p.m.
Spring 2027
Nicole Cherubini, March 31, 2027
Nicole Cherubini is an American visual artist and sculptor who works primarily with
ceramics. She lives and works in New York. Subverting form, Cherubini builds dysfunctional
vessels/objects that cannot contain; she debases their traditional purpose and recasts
them as new forms. The exterior of her sculptures is where Cherubini rejects compliant
beauty and pushes to the edges of “too much.” Taking up space, clashing, and tipping
into the uncouth is political vocabulary for Cherubini. Even her pedestals are multi-patterned
and dripping with glaze. Appropriating and transgressing class signifiers of ornamentation,
from fake chains to high fashion, are acts of defection. The resulting mashups are
a convivium gone wild.
Ms. Cherubini will give a presentation on Wednesday, March 31, 2027. The location is TBA.