Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Shaw.
Hi Michael, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I came to art both early and late. My mom was an artist, and so I grew up going to her gallery and museum exhibitions when I was a child, but in adolescence, art was only in my periphery at best. In my freshman year at U.C. Santa Barbara, where my major was undeclared, I took a drawing class taught by a fairly self-involved, overrated teacher, but with a very charismatic and involved grad student T.A., and in asking a lot of newbies if not necessarily unsophisticated questions, my fledgling commitment to art and being an artist was born (and that grad student, by the way, went on to a career in advertising).
After getting a BA in studio art from U.C.L.A., I immediately went to grad school at Hunter College in New York, choosing there over CalArts (which I got into) and the Whitney Independent Study Program (which I didn’t- so not a choice). New York was still relatively affordable back then, and I spent most of my time in Manhattan, though I eventually got studios in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (both in Brooklyn) and spent more time across the East River towards my latter time in the city. Since I’ve returned to southern California, living in different parts of Los Angeles than I’d experienced in my brief time in school, I have seen all the various permutations of gentrification putting strangleholds all over the city (including in Venice, which, as far as its population, has become nearly unrecognizable since I lived there, like a beachside boutique fest), and this has heavily informed my work, especially since about 2015. My exploration of housing has overlapped with an escalating housing crisis, and my involvement with the LA Tenants Union (Westside local) has led me into activism, and it in turn influences my art: what it can reflect, its efficacy, and its cultural footprint. Art generally, and the art worlds in particular, often exist in bubbles, and navigating that bubble, or bubbles, is an ongoing challenge.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In addition to both establishing and trying to determine my role or roles in the art world(s), the other big challenge, as many artists should tell you, is sustainability. I have been applying to more grants and other opportunities in the last couple of years than I did over the entirety of my career in all years prior. Navigating and making peace with rejections – the inevitable reality of grants, which are highly competitive – is a tough road. But I’m making work that no other artists are making, and I have enough encouragement (including receiving a Puffin Grant in 2022 for a project I’m collaborating on with an architect) to continue to strive to make better work. That’s one big motivating trajectory for the long haul: how is my work going to evolve, and what will it look like in the future, particularly several years down the road? Another big challenge is sticking with content that is not necessarily like a comfortable armchair but instead references some of the less-than-sunny aspects of our reality and doing so in the context of a nearly all-powerful art market. It’s a hearty challenge making work that has complex layers of both darkness and beauty and then making matches with not only appreciators but actual collectors of the work, those who are able to revel in that complexity.
Michael Shaw is a Los Angeles-based artist and activist. Shaw is also the creator and host of The Conversation Art Podcast, launched in 2011. His work is currently included in the exhibition “Sociality” at LA Tate gallery, through April 8th, and was included in the recent exhibition It’s My House! at the Porch Gallery in Ojai, CA, and has been exhibited throughout the U.S. He is the recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant in 2022, the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Quick Grant in 2021 and the New Student Award at Hunter College, where he received his MFA. He has been a member of the LA Tenants Union since 2019, where he advocates for tenant empowerment, helps guide tenants in crisis and attempts to address the more egregious threats that further gentrification. As a Westside local, Shaw is the creator and head of the architectural-based art project “Housing’s Final Frontier.” You can learn more about his work in his recently published “Urban Theater in Plain Sight: The Drama and Ceaseless Advancement of Gentrification in Los Angeles,” in Space on Space magazine.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.michaelshawstudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelshawstudio/
