About Shel Stefan
Born in Chicago and a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, Shel Stefan MFA '06 (they) received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, in 1996 and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art & Design in 2006. They have published, lectured, and exhibited their artwork in the USA, Canada, Italy, and China. Stefan’s art practice is rooted in an investigation of queer selfhood, making art and ideas that examine, redefine, and revel in notions of queer identity, gender, body, sexuality, and subculture.
Interview
What artistic media do you primarily work with, and what drew you to them? Do you feel they lend themselves to exploring queer narratives?
I love to work with old-school materials, such as paint, ink, chalk, graphite, wood, board, cloth, clay, metal, and paper—anything that drips, goops, pushes, flecks, dusts, shimmies, striates, sands, rips, chunks, chips, stains, surprises, and can resist, take, or make my fingerprint. It’s got to smell good, look good, feel good, even sound good. The materials I love to use are also accessible for the most part. I’ll paint on clean, found cardboard as quickly as on high-end purchased materials. I might even do better on the less “respectable” materials because I’m free from the stress of what people think or need me to make on that fancy thing. Queer materiality might be whatever materiality that resists mainstream imposition while providing rooted access to pleasure and health in making; this will be different for everyone.
How does your lived experience influence or shape your artistic practice and the themes you explore in your work?
I have been an out, queer, deep-feeling professional artist for just about 30 years. I have also been a gender-diverse being since I can remember. My lived experience as a queer and nonbinary trans person totally influences and shapes my artistic practice because I make work about sexuality, gender, kink, witchcraft, the body, and the beloved, and these themes intrinsically ignite when paired with an artist’s willingness to engage their personal life as fuel for inquiry. I do it because I have the agency to do so (make art about my own life), and it feels real, raw, and interesting. I also do it because I believe in art’s capacity for poetic justice and feel a sense of duty about it. Sometimes, art is the thing we must do, if not the very thing we can do, to make space to exist in this world or to provide a rebuttal in the face of societal ills. I believe art can be an antidote to bigotry.
What are some of the biggest influences on your work? How does your community impact your artistic voice and vision?
My Nonno was an artist, and it is said that he comes from a long line of makers from the Belluno region of Northern Italy. He was a sculptor, and although he might not have totally understood my contemporary life as a queer nonbinary trans artist due to his generational positionality, I’m certain of their influence on my practice and, in some way, I hope my artistic life makes them proud.
Another big influence on my work will always be the Feminist Art Movement from the 1970s forward. As a student, I learned so much from the experimentation of those powerhouses, and I was changed when I learned about what they made and did. I am certain that what was broken open in art history through their bravery and utilization of art as a stage for inquiry and revolt maintains impact and relevance today.
How does your work fit in (or not fit in) to the narratives of art history?
In some ways, I’m just another artist who makes self-portraits and works with the figure a lot. In other ways, I’m one of those artists who represent a sub-sub-subculture. Therefore, my work is italicized in a way that makes it kind of like blood oranges versus ordinary oranges. And in that way, perhaps the most meaningful way, I’m an artist trying to use their lived experience as part of a sub-sub-subculture and be honest about it through art. I ask questions, call stuff out, stick it to some entity that deserves it, or get a gosh darn second to breathe, take up space, and unfold in a depiction of beauty, décor, passion, exhaustion, lust, fervor, response, power, or introspection—none of which is unique, but all of which has its rightful place in the narrative of art history.
How has your experience with the College impacted the way you relate to your identity?
My experience at Maine College of Art & Design was formative, to say the least. It sent me further on a trajectory of knowing that there are pockets of humanity in education who cherish and will stand by queer and trans people.
After years of living and working as an artist, I was accepted into MECA&D’s graduate program, and I was not sure how I would be treated as an out queer, gender-diverse artist who made gay stuff. Upon arrival in Portland, however, I learned quickly that the College, its faculty, and its staff embraced me fully and were positioned to do everything they could to make me feel at home, supported, and celebrated as a student. I was treated not just as a student, but as a whole person, and beyond that, as an artist whose sense of identity deserved dignity, care, and protection in the face of bigotry and oppression.
What do you see as the future of queer art and its role in broader cultural conversations around LGBTQIA+ issues?
One of the reasons I like making art is that I am a little controlling. It’s so nice to have that sheet of paper or smooth panel that no one else can touch. It’s purely mine, folks, hands off. It’s a lot of responsibility to be the only mark maker on that board or the only thumbprint in that clay, but it’s mine, and it feels good to clear the room, so to speak. That is especially true for how I see the future of queer art. Not so much that we won’t be collaborating, but more so that non-2SLGBTQIA+ folks can maybe take a step or two back while collaborating and let those with lived experience lead the way on what narratives exist around conversations of queerness and transness.
Also, from my perspective as a queer, trans, nonbinary artist, another way to comprehend the important metaphor of having that clean sheet of paper that no one else can touch is first to understand that so many aspects of my life are in a constant state of being meddled with. I can’t go to the beach and go for a cute swim in my speedo in my nonbinary trans body without thinking that I might get some poor treatment from nearby folks for the way my body looks. I can’t go to the corner store without my well-intentioned neighbour misgendering me in a really exaggerated way which makes me feel incongruent. There is a continual state of interruption. So, when I get into that art studio, or behind that easel or drawing board, it’s the one space where I feel truly and finally free to express myself wholly and unencumbered, a place where I can articulate, design, flesh out, control, and experiment about my life, ideas, and interests without trepidation. The future of queer art is understanding just how crucial this space is for us and helping create access to it for more queer artists and more queer artist communities
What are some of the recurring motifs, symbols, narratives, or themes that appear in your work, and what significance do they hold — particularly in relation to queer themes and experiences? How do they counter narratives of heteronormativity?
I have been making self-portraits for at least 30 years, and recently, in 2024, I finished a series of large self-portrait paintings as an effort for me to hold space for who I know myself to be. The paintings are a moment for me to be in my body and make a stage for the ways I experience what queer nonbinary trans femme writer Lucie Fielding refers to as “attuning to gender-pleasure” and “how to feel yummy in our bodies.” These works access some of the ways I do this, whether it be through the adornment of augmentatively-charged items such as leather or an axe, or through the use of strategic devices such as earmuffs or a helmet, which buffer me from external sensation so I can better access the gender-pleasure of being shirtless in my trans nonbinary body, for example. Why augment and buffer? Because being constantly observed is exhausting and sometimes painful. Being able to give myself moments of feeling bare and whole while being implemented and cushioned in a way that feels good is just the right medicine to counteract a life of being scrutinized for my sexuality and gender.
Shel Stefan MFA ’06, Gargolla VIII, Clay, Wood, Wire, Shell, and Resin, 13” x 8” x 7”, 2024
Do you see your work as a method of resistance? If so, how does that resistance manifest in your work?
Interestingly, I’ve come back into working in sculpture recently on a body of work that is all about resistance, namely a set of 10 gargoyle sculptures (Gargolla, 2024), which were exhibited with my series of self-portraits in 2024 in an exhibition called They, They, & It: Reflections on Trans Identity, also featuring the work of Mickey Vescera and curated by Dr. Angela Clarke at the museum of Il Centro, the Italian Cultural Centre in Vancouver, BC. They are an act of resistance, pure, simple, and archaic, and best understood by my artist statement, as follows:
“To be clear, these Gargolla ward off bigots against trans, nonbinary, and queer people. They are born from the unconsented chaos induced by malevolent presence and are exalted as antidotes to counteract the poison brought about by this form of bigotry. They are in the tradition of Italian apotropaic mascherone and gargolla/garguglia (gargoyle) – grotesque architectural ornaments whose function is to scare away evil spirits from entering a space. As queer, nonbinary, and trans people, we are often targeted as bad, evil, threatening, and dangerous; however, we know, through days, years, and centuries of lived experience, that true violence comes from the people who hate us. It’s sneaky of them and quite scary, honestly. They are the ones to be truly suspicious of, not us. So, I ward them off through my Gargolla. These Gargolla sculptures protect us. Don’t be scared to look at them, unless, of course, you are a bigot.”