OXFORD, Miss. – When University of Mississippi art graduate
student Vitus Shell was 3 years old, watermelons and
pickles grew on trees. At least, that’s what he thought.
The unusual “fruit trees” were among his favorite subjects
to illustrate.
“I didn’t know back then that watermelons didn’t grow on
trees; that was just my thing,” said Shell, now 28 and in
his final year of UM’s Master of Fine Arts program.
Since those early drawings, Shell’s “thing” has certainly
changed, transitioning from the desire to be a comic book
artist, to the mixed-medium paintings and prints depicting
African-American stereotypes and struggles that recently
earned him a $15,000 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
The Louisiana native is one of 15 MFA students nationwide
to receive the prestigious award this year. He said some of
the funds would go toward a wide-format printer to increase
both the size and quantity of his work, helping to make his
message more widespread. “I’m excited about the grant,”
Shell said. “I plan on making my work bigger, and doing
that, I can address the problem (of African-American
stereotypes), and it could be more in your face, kind of
like how the problem is for me.”
The grant was awarded as part of the Joan Mitchell
Foundation’s 2007 MFA Grant Program, which was established
in 1997 to help graduate students shift into art as a
career. Shell was nominated for the grant by UM printmaking
associate professor Sheri Reith, who taught him as an
undergraduate at the Memphis College of Art and encouraged
him to enroll at Ole Miss.
While Shell was surprised when he received the phone call
informing him of the award, others were not.
“I think (Shell) is very aware of what is going on in the
contemporary art world, and he knows where he fits into
it,” said Philip Jackson, assistant professor of art. “It
doesn’t surprise me that he received the grant, because
he’s a very talented individual. I see a lot of things to
come. He shows a lot of promise.”
Shell has shown his artwork in both solo and group
exhibitions, and his pieces, such as those in the
“SlimCrow” and “Brown Paper Bag Test” series, address past
and present issues in African-American culture.
“My work is really dealing with the black experience, but
it is not just for black people,” Shell said. “It is just
making people re-examine what they think black is, and even
black folks rethinking what was considered black. My work
is kind of playing around with those stereotypes and how
people are perceived.”
Shell’s latest series, “Derty South,” places colorful
images of people on a backdrop of faded, photocopied,
vintage 20th -century advertisements, to create a parallel
between old culture and new.
Shell graduated from the Memphis College of Art in 2000
and, after numerous exhibits, enrolled in Ole Miss’ MFA
program as a graduate printmaking student in 2005. An
exhibit of his work is displayed at Oxford’s Southside
Gallery. A few can be viewed online at
http://www.southsideartgallery.com/
To learn more about art education at UM, visit