Visual Artist & Storyteller‍ ‍

Shelby Reed (b. 2000) is an artist working in ceramic & mixed media sculpture. Her work explores themes of femininity, queerness, & the body through fantasy, narrative, and worldbuilding. 

Born and raised in Bucks County Pennsylvania she received a BFA in ceramics from The Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple University. This May she completed her MFA in Ceramics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Shelby’s work has been included in several juried group exhibitions such as the 2024 NCECA Juried Student Exhibition at the Visual Art Center of Richmond, Pink Silo at Wavelength Space in Chattanooga TN, & Gilded Shadows at Park Towne Place Galleries in Philadelphia PA.

Her third solo exhibition, Stomach Without a Breath, took place at the Ewing Gallery in Knoxville, TN this April. She has attended residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, the Hambidge Center, & Vermont Studio Center.

See more: CV

The work explores the experience and realities facing the existence of the feminine queer body. Floral bodies manifest themselves in the gallery as physical abstracted representations of these bodies. Seemingly struggling and weighed down by some kind of force or overwhelming visceral feeling. Vintage and highly ornate furniture objects serve as cages to contain the collected and harvested floral bodies. These objects reference religious shrines, gothic architecture, altar pieces, and scientific preservation. References that speak directly to the history of the Catholic Church’s control over the narrative surrounding the living breathing feminine queer body and the objectification of the feminine corpse that often follows after death. Moments in history such as the Catholic Church’s role and connection to early medicine, live dissections of the female body, witch hunts, and ritualization of dismembered body parts. Exploring these historical events and the way they bleed into and shape social and political attitudes and understanding of the feminine queer body. These conceptual ideas weave together to create a fantastical story centering floral bodies and the harvester, the harvester serving as a force and feeling, a manifestation of the history and horrors of control and power that continues to reinvent itself into our current day.

Artist Statement