Shantell Martin Working with Students (March & April 2017)

As Curator of Public Art for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Aaron Ott, notes, “The work to be done by the Arts Management students will benefit the City of Buffalo well beyond the duration of Martin’s residency. Their work will identify a location for Shantell, and will provide the AK’s Public Art Initiative’s Mural Program an actionable matrix of locations in the East Side for years to come.” In this way, Martin’s residency will be the catalyst for many future public art projects.

Martin will also lead a workshop for Visual Arts students that will include a range of exercises that encourage drawing spontaneously, trusting your instincts, and having fun in the process. Martin says, “This is not a drawing workshop, but a workshop that allows you draw. Let go of all your preconceptions about what drawing is / should be and show off your artistic, collaborative side!”

Martin’s CAI residency will involve the execution of a mural on Buffalo’s East Side, in connection with the Albright-Knox Public Art Initiative’s Mural Program. Exhibiting Martin’s works in the Museum and simultaneously executing a permanent outdoor public mural is intended to make a public statement that beautiful and inspiring creative work does not strictly belong hanging on walls in marble buildings or behind glass but belongs to communities and should be present in all neighborhoods.

Martin’s work is described as a “meditation of lines; a language of characters, creatures and messages that invite viewers to share a role in her creative process.” She is a former visiting scholar at MIT Media Lab and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Martin has been featured on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and her hand-illustrated bedroom walls graced the cover of The New York Times home section in May 2012. Her work has appeared in Creative Review Magazine, and she was named French Glamour’s “coolest it girl” of New York in 2011.