Randy Shull: Crossing Boundaries
July 11 - September 28, 2008
Curator:
Suzanne Baizerman, Ph.D.
Exhibition Designer:
Ted Cohen
Major funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation
“In my life, in my work, and in my travels I like the excitement of crossing boundaries. I love the interplay between lifestyle and work and the products that come out of that interaction. Sometimes it is painting, sometimes it is furniture design, sometime it is architecture, sometimes it is garden design, sometimes it is travel.” Randy Shull, 2007
Randy Shull entered the scene in the late 1980’s. His roots are in construction (learned at home in central Illinois) but he went on to train in design and studio furniture making at the Rochester Institute of Technology (graduated in 1986). He found his educational experience to be very rigid and formal. As a reaction to this formality, Randy followed the impulse to experiment with his work. The need to explore and push boundaries led him to Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina where he was an artist-in-residence. Today his work takes risks; he has no guidelines or boundaries and often works with mixed media; wood, paint, metal, found objects, etc. Many different artists inspire him as well as places he visits, places he lives and people he meets, especially his life partner, Hedy Fischer. Shull is constantly thinking of different ways to push the idea of art and he takes on new forms of exploring with every new piece. He is “Following the un-known path.”
Photos courtesy of Adam Willis.
PHOTO GALLERY
ABOUT THE ARTIST
For over 25 years Randy Shull has been working at the intersection of architecture, landscape design, furniture design and painting. Randy’s colorful and highly textured paintings reveal countless layers of paint and an interest in the archaeology of the process of painting. His furniture bridges the gap between art and design by combining painting and furniture in one composition.
Shull received his BFA in Furniture Design from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986. He was awarded a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in 1994, a NEA Southern Arts Federation grant in 1995 and a residency at Penland School of Crafts and a master residency at Oregon School of Arts & Crafts. His work is included in a number of national museum collections including The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The High Museum, Atlanta; The Renwick Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; The Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, NC; Racine Museum of Art, Racine, WI; The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh, NC; Museum of Art and Design, New York, Black Mountain College Museum; The Asheville Art Museum, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art; The Mobile museum of Art, and numerous corporate collections including Fidelity, Wells Fargo, Piedmont Natural Gas and others.
He maintains a large warehouse studio in Asheville, NC and a mid century modern live/work space in Merida, Mexico. Shull and his partner, Hedy Fischer, are collectors of contemporary art, evident in the exhibition Limited Visibility, featuring works from their collection, exhibited at the CAM Raleigh in 2014-2015. Shull serves on the collections committee at The North Carolina Museum of Art.
