Shelby Donnelly

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Fine Arts, Product Design (MDes)
Fibers faculty

MFA Fibers, Tyler School of Art
BFA Printmaking and Drawing, Washington University

Contact Info

Fine Arts
Product Design (MDes)

Donnelly is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator. Donnelly makes screenprinted and sewn textiles, garments, and objects that are contextualized in videos and installations. Her work stages dramas that come from observing humanity’s relationship with ritual, ceremony, and spirituality and how that plays out in everyday existence as well as the subconscious. Incorporating fragments from cultural sources (film, novels, news) and materials (fabric, paper) her work is a visual response that “materializes gestures” – making physical what it typically a fleeting moment.

Donnelly has exhibited both internationally and nationally at International House Philadelphia’s Ibrahim Theater, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Haus der Kunst Museum. Donnelly was the 2014 recipient of the Independence Foundation Artist Fellowship and traveled to Morocco to co-curate an exhibition at TALIM. Donnelly attended artist residencies at Millay Artist Colony in New York, the Cité de Internationale in Paris, France, Soaring Gardens, and Second State Press in Pennsylvania. Donnelly holds a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis (2002) and a MFA in Material Studies from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2008).

Shelby Donnelly lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.