Past Resident

Vitus Shell

Vitus Shell is a mixed-media collage painter born in Monroe, LA, where he lives and works. His work is geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful images, deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. He received a BFA from Memphis College of Art, 2000 and an MFA from the University of Mississippi, 2008. Vitus Shell has been in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Mass MoCA, Joan Mitchell Center, Skowhegan School of Art, and Masur Museum of Art. @theshellofvitus on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest

“My full intention in life is to represent for the people who look and grew up like me.”

Q&A with Vitus Shell (from Crosstown Arts newsletter, Sept. 25, 2020)

Crosstown Arts residency alumnus Vitus Shell is a mixed-media collage painter born in Monroe, Louisiana, where he lives and works as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Crosstown Arts registrar Jesse Butcher caught up with Vitus to discuss how art history has influenced his work, his art mentors, his co-founding of the NIA Collective, and his upcoming group show for the Masur Museum in Monroe.

Jesse Butcher: You have a deep interest in portraiture and representation, as well as Southern hip-hop. With your background in graphic design, what is your opinion of Houston-based ​Pen and Pixel ​(Aaron and Shawn Brauch, 1992-2003) and its contribution to the aesthetics of rap music? Has their particular methodology influenced your painting or thought process on representation within hip-hop culture?

Vitus Shell: Being a big No Limit and Cash Money records fan during the ’90s, the imagery that was produced by Pen and Pixel definitely affected my work. I’m actually creating a body of work that is influenced by their aesthetics: the bling, the rims, the odd perspective, the compositions, the scale, etc. Portraiture, for me, is a part of an appeal to non-art folks, and figures are easily relatable. I’m still working through how the Pen and Pixel aesthetics translate into my work, outside of the odd compositions.

Several of your works seem to reference the halo or nimbus, which is notable for its prevalence in Italo-Byzantine painting (Giotto, Cavallini). These are usually intended to signify saints and martyrs. When did you begin to incorporate this aspect into your work?

During graduate school at the University of Mississippi, a history class on Medieval Art really stuck with me. I could see the influence of North African art on Byzantine Paintings, with the grandeur and gold. The halo connection to the sun disc was used in a lot of Egyptian hieroglyphics, well before Giotto and Cavallini used the technique to reference a person of importance. I started to create compositions that were a mix of a hip-hop album cover and mosaic mural. My thinking was [that I was] placing my work in the long conversation of portraiture.

Text plays an important role within your practice. I am reminded of Keith Piper’s ​The Body Politic ​(1983), amongst other works. How do you go about approaching text? 

I like to take words from advertisements, soul music, or hip-hop songs and use them to guide the viewer through the work. I believe that Black musicians are speaking for the voiceless. All music addresses bigger issues in my eyes.

While you attended the Memphis College of Art, were you able to work with Alonzo Davis? During your time at the school, you co-founded the NIA Collective with several of your peers. Can you speak towards your experience in NIA? Community and mentorship appear to be very important to your practice.

Alonzo Davis is a very important person, but during those early years at Memphis College of Art (MCA), I didn’t realize just how important he was. And that may have been a good thing because I probably would have hounded him more. I never forced a relationship with him but allowed things to play out naturally. He would always simply smile at me and give me advice when needed. One day in the hallway at MCA, I ran into him, and he told me of a possible opportunity to work under an artist who had recently moved back to the city. The artist was Brenda Joysmith, and she needed help with some projects. I agreed to the opportunity and arranged a meeting with her and her husband. That relationship grew from that meeting, and it changed my life. Brenda Joysmith and Robert Bain became mentors for me, which helped to shape my career.

NIA was founded in 2000, and we met at Joysmith Gallery in the newly developed South Main Arts District. I had recently graduated from MCA and was looking for my way. For me, NIA was the place of nurturing and building that was needed. The group started because of the lack of opportunities for Black artists in the city of Memphis.

We started to think about creating our own shows and events. We traveled to meet other artists, attended exhibitions, and visited historical sites. The group helped me to understand community and the importance of giving forward. That was my proverbial graduate school experience before formally entering an MFA program.

You are currently making a body of work intended for the Masur Museum in Monroe. What has inspired this body of work?

Currently, I am working on a group show at Masur, titled “The South Got Something to Say,” which is based on a famous line from Outkast’s Andre 3000’s speech at the 1995 Source Awards. The show was originally intended as a solo show for myself, but 2020 has made me think bigger. I wondered how this opportunity could address a bigger problem? I decided to share the exhibition with other local Black artists who needed more exposure. In Monroe, my hometown, there was a need, similar to what happened with NIA, to create more inclusion in the arts. With this exhibition, collaborations with other Black creatives (dancers, musicians, filmmakers, seamstresses, etc.) address the larger issues there. With the COVID pandemic, issues that have plagued the Black community (and that this country has ignored for so long) have started to surface in a way that can no longer be written off. The new work and this exhibition will work on the dismissal of those inequities.

Thanks so much for speaking with us Vitus! We look forward to seeing the exhibition at Masur.