Vitus Shell
March 16, 2023
The Great Hall
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 in Tennessee, 2000 and an MFA from University of Mississippi, 2008.
Vitus Shell has been in residence at the Crosstown Arts, Anderson Ranch, Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts, Mass MoCA, Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans, Skowhegan School of Art, Tougaloo Art Colony, and Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA. To date, he has accumulated an impressive list of achievements, some of which include: participating in exhibits at universities, museums, and private galleries across the country including Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN, Thelma Sadoff Center of the Arts, Fond da Lac, WI, Tone Memphis, Art Center Sarasota, FL, Hilliard Art Museum, McKenna Museum of African American Art, New Orleans, LA, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Louisiana at Monroe, LA, Philander Smith College, Little Rock, AR, Cue Art Foundation, NYC, Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, TX, University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, Tennessee Art Commission Gallery, Nashville, TN, Miami University, Oxford, OH ; painted murals for the National Civil Rights Museum’s NBA Pioneers exhibit, Indianola City Pool in Indianola, MS, Union Parish Elementary School in Farmerville, LA, the City of Coldwater, MS, the city of Senatobia, MS; and being commissioned to do public art by the Memphis UrbanArt Commission. Shell has received numerous grants including the Joan Mitchell MFA Award and Camille Hanks-Cosby Scholarship and was named Louisianan Artist of the Year by Louisiana Life magazine for 2021.
As of 2020, Vitus Shell is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Louisiana Tech University.
Video
Podcast
Photos
