ARTIST & DESIGNER

Kelly Sheppard Murray lives and maintains her studio Raleigh, North Carolina. She is an Professor of Art at Wake Technical Community College, where she teaches 2D and 3D design, sculpture and painting while maintaining a vibrant art practice that includes commissions and public exhibitions. Charlotte Russell Contemporary, VAE, Artspace, Durham Art Guild’s Truist Gallery; and Wilma Daniels Gallery, Wilmington, NC have exhibited large groupings of Murray’s biomorphic encaustic sculptures. Commissions and recent corporate placement include Allspring Global Corporate offices in Charlotte, NC & London, UK; UNC Hospital, Holly Springs, Pinnacle Bank Nashville & Memphis; and Design Dimensions, Zebulon. You can follow her work on Instragram @kellysheppardmurray_art.

Artist Statement

I fashion a wide range of polymorphic, multicolored structures that have their roots in natural forms, drawing from the shapes of plants, moss, lichen, fungi, shells and geological forms but not typically replicating specific species or locations. I observe urban development in the nearby surroundings, where I see the devastating human impact on the natural habitats that we feel so disassociated from. My observations at a changing landscape has fueled my desire to observe and study the small and often ephemeral species in the natural world that demonstrates strength and resilience because it persists even in harsh and inhospitable locations. I want to engage the viewer to think about their relationship with the environment by making nature inspired forms from industrial materials. I use readily available materials used for domestic construction which I form and then layer encaustic wax paint to transform the otherwise ordinary materials into objects reminiscent of the natural world. I create my small sculptural elements day after day in a somewhat ritualistic practice that builds a quantity of elements due to the persistent daily making.

Collecting hundreds of small forms, I slowly and deliberately assemble my pieces for installation – each one a unique building block to develop my personal visual language that is then arranged in varied ways within an exhibition space. By developing this malleable visual idiom and relying on modules that can be reconfigured or rearranged depending on the circumstance, I rely on a fluid and changing language that allows me to create a new story with each installation. I can, then, invite the audience to join me as we try together to decipher a narrative. The day-to-day practice is intended to remind viewers how small steps can have a significant impact on both our perceptions of the world and our environment itself.