I had heard the name “Lee Shiney” for years
before I finally met him at an art event in Manning, IA. I had no idea he lived
so close, the school he lives in in Arcadia is less than 20 miles from Denison.
Yes, you read that right. Shiney lives in a school.
“As my wife and I have reached the point of retirement age, we jumped off the leap of faith cliff and bought the old school in Arcadia, Iowa to live and work in,” Shiney explained. I had hoped to get a tour of the school earlier this year, but alas life and previous engagements have gotten in the way! Sometime soon, though.
As far as Shiney’s artwork goes, he
hasn’t resigned himself to one medium.
“I’m kind of all over the place, and I don’t like to pick favorites,” he said. “I see things, rather, as dropping into a particular medium, or technique, or whatever, and focus on it, working through iterations, teasing out perceived failures and successes, approaching things with a kind of engineering mentality of breaking things and embracing mistakes until I feel like I’m making some kind of a breakthrough.”
“I really
like that I’m not pigeonholed into one signature style, and within all the
different categories of things I’ve made, I enjoy all the variations within
them,” he replied when I asked if he had a favorite piece. “Things I’ve
particularly liked: ‘Moiré Wheels,’ a kinetic sculpture of 50 interconnected
bicycle wheels that created a pulsing effect that exhibited at the Wichita Art
Museum 2008-2010.” Shiney also listed his “Sequence” pieces, which are a
sectional 60-foot long acrylic on reclaimed pallet lumber with an assist from a
turntable-driven pantograph;
his early “Automatic” series that he worked on over a number of years where he
experimented with slowly spinning canvases and different painting techniques;
and more recently his “Contrapuntalisms” that are encaustic-based collages with
photos and found objects.
Shiney doesn’t have any upcoming exhibitions at this point, and is instead focusing on creating work that makes him happy.
What is he working on
right now? “Designing/building some large rolling easels to hold 6x6 foot
unstretched canvases, and use these to make some really large-scale works.
There’s probably an 8x8 foot option in the future too… I figure that should get
me through the winter.”
"61 Cygni" acrylic on canvas, 30"x78"x2"
“I just spent a few months with my photography roots, but working with iPhone images, manipulated with Affinity Photo, and inkjet printed on an old Epson wide format. Now, I’m taking a break from that and going back to acrylics, experimenting with fluid and pouring mediums, and also using Montana Gold spray acrylics.”
How does Shiney title his artwork, when it’s not necessarily made with an end subject in mind? “I’m laughing because it’s something I have perpetually stumbled on,” Shiney admitted. “I try to catalog everything with something like LS23-001 (2023, and work #1 of that year), etc. Beyond that I’ve used categories (Automatic 27), researched titles (The Moons Venus Should Have Had), and even something I called the S5 naming system where I found and printed off all the five-letter Scrabble words (this was years before Wordle, thank you) and randomly assigned names from the list, mostly to thumb my nose at convention. Nowadays, I pretty much stick to catalog numbers.”
“I really just enjoy
making things,” Shiney said, especially when it comes to “’making things that
make things.’ So I have a 2.1 meter turntable that I built years ago that is
still in use for large circle paintings, and several small ones. I make various
extensions and compasses and spray tools that are used for painting. I’ve built
motorized, computerized devices for dripping and moving paint.” He even has an
old Roomba vacuum cleaner that he’s used for random marker drawings! “Mine is a
long list of built and hacked things that help make art.”
What’s an issue or stumbling block you’ve encountered? “Oh, life? How does one try to create consistency, a work ethic, while (in the past, for me) working a job, or now where I’m essentially a maintenance man of a 15,000 square foot school building that we now live and work in? Being able to make art as one’s life mission, and making time to actually do that, is the real challenge.”
Any advice for artists just starting out? “Make art and show your best work,” Shiney said. “Be able to talk about what you do; do not hide behind some notion that ‘art should speak for itself.’ Don’t worry about having to have just the right materials and supplies, look for cheap or free alternatives. Study the masters, including the recent ones…they are giving you permission to do the things your friends and family will question. And creating means actually making something that someone can hold in their hands (thank you Sir Ken Robinson.)”
“One gets to be 70 and
it’s WTF, where did the time go? Where did the life go? If you want to make art
your priority, then do it. And literally shut out the naysayers. You will reach
a point (possibly in terror) where you realize there’s been a lot of water
under the bridge… Becoming what…late middle age??…has sharpened our focus on
what’s ahead. I also had cancer in 2001 which sort of set the stage for finally
focusing at least part of my time on art.”
To learn more about
Shiney’s artwork, check out his website at LeeShiney.com, or follow him on
Facebook and Instagram.
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