Demian Shipley-Marshall
Artistic Statement
I work with multiple methods across the fields of art and design but consider myself a storyteller at heart. Through my work, I endeavor to explore if older values toward the individual and environment can add new perspective to conflicts humanity is facing in the contemporary world. I am influenced by world folklore, particularly stories around animals. Originally these stories were how cultures began exploring their worlds both real and imagined. Many indigenous cultures attributed similar characteristics to certain animals, which illustrates a deep root that connects humans to each other and their histories. Because of this, I believe our first teachers can still help us navigate the turbulent waters of our future.
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Whatever form my work takes it has two guiding principles, my work must always affirm life and seek truth. I do not seek to demonize our modern world, and I try to avoid the biased lens people often view their history through. I want my audience to consider that when building a better tomorrow, is it about creating a new way of life, or remembering and old one?
Vessels
Vessels is an independent project of 3D printed plastic lamps addressing the impact of the education system on children. Working with students drastically changed my views of education and the industrialized world. My goal for working with students was to improve them as individuals, but this concept became much more complicated as trying to collaborate with my students made me question if I was improving them based on my own perceptions or theirs. Did that question even matter seeing as how my administrators had very precise expectations of both of us? Expectations that sounded more like indoctrination than education. I use the forms of classical pottery to represent the goals of education as it harks back to Greece, the cradle of Western education. I was also told that I should be molding my students, the same way you manipulate the clay to make a vase or pot. The true self is represented by a light. Light is used to show the spark of who the student is now and their potential. The form of the vessels is not useable until it has totally closed around the light, extinguishing it, showing that being useful in society is not compatible with individual growth and fulfillment. These vases differ from commercial products as they are not functioning lights, but merely represent that small light that glows in everyone. However the method of construction and appearance draw influence from commercial mass production as I believe this is the true goal of mainstream education.
Rose
3D Printed ABS Plastic and LED light
27x25x25cm,
2013
Digital Print on Aluminum
51x34cm
2014
Lion Behind Glass at Cheyenne Mt. Zoo, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Beyond The Fence
An independent body of work using animals that represent those gifts and virtues we often repress in ourselves. The animals are digitally photographed and displayed on aluminum prints. Despite being well cared for, I still see them as victims of industrial society’s need to make everything monetarily useful. All the animals are in some form of captivity-zoos, animal preserves, or domestication. The title and description play an important role for each piece as it describes the noble past, versus the modern circumstances in which I photographed them. I attempted to focus past the captivity on the beauty of the animal.
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My photos show that we are debasing these sacred symbols by using them for entertainment. The lions are photographed as they are fed near the viewing area so that people can watch. The bears are photographed playing in full sight of zoo visitors so they can laugh at the bears’ antics. The wolves are shown coming to the glass wall for the food, again so that visitors can see them. If the animals were not debased as entertainment, they would not be supported by society.
The story of Raven and Bear
An independent body of work where I use multiple materials and processes, digital illustration, 3D modeling and metal fabrication, to address my complicated relationship with my father who died in 2014. My father always identified the bear as his spirit animal. Bears are the teachers and protectors in Ute mythology, and my father was both of those things. His belief that you could not own anything that had an inner life taught me respect for all living things as our brothers in creation. He also viewed his role in the family as protector. His goal in life was to be a “husband," a partner to my mother, a reliable and useful member of our family, and a teacher and guide to my brother and myself. John Gardner in his novel Nickel Mountain uses the bear to symbolize the outcast, the individual who is very close to everyone else, who can move quietly on the outskirts of society, but who is ultimately not capable of being fully accepted. My father was also that.
The raven is prevalent in both Celtic and Viking myth as the symbol of death, sacrifice and war. It is the emblem of Macha, the goddess of war to the Celts. I began this body of work with therapeutic drawings of bears, my father, and ravens, how I envisioned death. As I continued, I began to combine the two. The first combination is my perception of my father’s death. I felt that when my younger brother died, my father lost his future, and as Camus said, the loss of a future causes despair which only became more intense as my father grew older. The second combination came as I started to see my father not as unique, but as a type of man common in the industrialized world. Like many men who become fathers he linked his worth to his usefulness, and like many he lost sight of himself, viewing death as a judgement on a failure to be of use. rather than as a neutral and necessary part of life.
I’d like the viewer to come away from these pieces with the third view that evolved while making this. A view of death as just a fact, not as something evil or good, but just as something that is and is inevitable. It is our perceptions that colour the way we see death, but it is neutral, taking “the just and the unjust” without prejudice. This is shown in the piece “Blown Away” where death is gently blowing my father into the wind, like dandelion seeds.
Idol
3D Printed ABS Plastic, Brass, Copper, and Leather
20x25x27cm
2017
Sköll and Hati
3D printed ABS plastic and resin, Acrylic Paint, Walnut and Cherry wood, 44x15x20cm each, 2019
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These two sculptures are influenced by Norse myth and imagery from multiple pagan cultures around the world. In the Poetic Edda, the closest written work we have to Norse legends, Sköll and Hati are linked to Fenrir, the wolf son of Loki. Every translation of the Edda changes the identities of Sköll and Hati, so that they become the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Norse literature. However, all versions say that the brothers were great hunters and challenged each other; one to hunt the moon and one to hunt the sun. This is myth is relevant as these sculptures show the potential in allowing ourselves to be what we really are. The sculptures are anthropomorphic wolves, creatures that predate domestication. The brothers are triumphantly showing their catch to the other. Each brother is portrayed as an idol, the symmetry reflecting Egyptian art, the defined bodies influenced by Greco-Roman sculpture, carrying spears, the traditional weapon of hunters across cultures. The brothers wear jewelry influenced by northern European art, and breech cloths influenced from Ute clothing. Each brother stands on a vegvisir, or Viking compass made of eight rune staves which offer protection and guidance.
I hope the viewer sees the potential that lies inside them. These brothers accomplished the impossible by embracing their human ingenuity and their connection to the natural world.
The Menagerie
This is an independent body of work that illustrates how I see the modern world. All of us come from older cultures that developed understandings of their worlds, seen and unseen, through the animals they lived with. This shows a deep root that runs through us, a connection to our world we now ignore to conform to a social structure which uses manufactured expectations as a method to disrupt undesirable individualism.
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The subject of each illustration is based on a story where I see a person or group being a victim of these manufactured systems. They are represented as an animalistic humanoid barely visible amongst their surroundings except for armour they wear. The armour is based on sketches I made in the Royal Armoury in the Tower of London, because I’m dealing with the pressures developed by imperial attitudes of western origan. Armour gives the wearer a feeling of security, power, and wealth. However, at the same time in confines you, limits your movement, and separates you from your environment. The animals are selected based on symbolic meanings linking to human qualities that are often suppressed.
The Gift
Graphite, Watercolour, Coloured Pencil, and Ink on paper 51x73cm,
2021
To See Yourself, See Me
This collaborative project was created in response to seeing the regalia of a Mesolithic female who was buried in what is now Bad Dürrenberg, Germany at the British Museum’s World of Stonehenge Exhibit. The artifacts reminded me that Northern Europeans. have a past tied to their environment before we became the colonizers. I wanted to tell the story of this transition and remind people of Northern European decent of this past in hopes of adding renewed perspective to our modern society.
Modern archeology attempts to develop a more complete view of history through understanding the individuals by their artifacts. This idea inspired me to create objects of different stages in history to tell the story. I was initially inspired to create with Mesolithic techniques. I foraged my environment. This included natural materials, old creations, and manufactured materials. Eventually, this led to old and new methods and tools to create. An old leather belt was cut with a sharpened stone, jute twine bound laser etched plastic talismans, and photosensitive resin created Anglo-Saxon patterns. When I placed them on Julia Haro (Model), the pieces gained life. We did a photo shoot and I asked Julia act as though she was conducting a ritual. A story began to emerge, here I saw our spiritualistic past inside all our achievements. She never left, and through time she was offering us something, light. I asked my mother (Deb Shipley) to write a poem to capture this sentiment.
...when animals could talk
This collaborative project started as a way to get back to the heart of my motivations. I wanted to shatter modern ideologies and rebuild with the influence of the old. This influenced me to start working with shattered, mass-produced, terra-cotta gardening pots. For me this represents an older way of life corrupted with a modern industrial motivation. I wanted to shatter it but make something new in a way that acknowledges the process. This led me to Kintsugi, but mostly the philosophies behind the practice. Wabi-sabi, which calls for seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted, as well as mushin, the acceptance of change. I built several sculptures using 3D printed structures as a base to adhere the shattered pots. The process inspired a lot of creative potential, but the figure was not communicating my message.
I decided that what I needed was for these creations to speak. Eventually this lead me to developing the idea into making costumes for performers to tell the indigenous stories that I felt could reshape modern perceptions. For my own story I was drawn to the figure of Cernunnos, but while there was such a figure, it was hard to find a story of him. I was then reminded of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is an odd story in the King Arthur anthology as it does not contain the usual Norman re-writes of the original Welsh stories. Many scholars believe that the large, green, and immortal figure that visits Arthur’s court to challenge the knights of the round table at Yule was originally Cernunnos himself. The embodiment of nature comes to the greatest hall of man to remind them that they are not the master of nature, they are merely tolerated. I worked with photographer Camille Meisner to bring the creation to life.
Monumental Bullshit
Video Proof of Concept
Digital Video
Duration: 5:35 minutes
2024
This was a collaborative project with Daniel Leyland, Suilven Hunter, Lydia Bell, Nicolà Borrer, Pon Chanarat, and myself. Each of us foraged for stones ranging in measurements of 5x5 cm to 20x20 cm length and width. We then designed false and humorous pieces of information to be laser etched on the stone and placed them back into the world. Through our project we were satirizing how people receive information/ misinformation, how they determine it to be true, and how they spread it.
We saw this as a gentle intervention, one that we hoped would provoke some amusement, but also some thoughts around our individual relationships with the information surrounding us in this contemporary landscape.
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I collected, designed and laser etched 4 stones in total and hid them in locations around the county of Essex, England for this project. I also created the final video. I continue to create more Monuments to Bullshit and hide them in undisclosed locations for future discovery.