Throughout the past several years of her art career, Shelly Mcoy has explored avenues by which to blend her training as a painter and as a sculptor. The resulting works have run the gamut from American flags made with color-coordinated crayons (such as those installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut), to suit jackets and trench coats suspended in cement (installed at the Lesher Center for the Arts). While all have integrated painting in one way ,shape or form, none have had the painterly quality present in McCoy’s most recent body of work Portraits: an exploration of textiles as paint. These newest works, currently on display at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, are McCoy’s latest demonstration of her ability to pursue wholly novel methods by virtue of her masterful understanding of form, her inventive resourcefulness, and her continued push to find a new framework to express imagery.
The process of developing these portraits is a fascinating exercise in concepts of color and depth. In these works, her canvas and paint are textiles sourced from friends’ discarded articles of clothing, the local Goodwill, or even the leftover fabric from a reupholstered chair in her home. First, she draws an initial depiction of the subject at hand - usually after the subject has modeled for her in a photoshoot. McCoy then builds onto this image through several layers of assorted fabrics cut into particular shapes, be it the black of an eyebrow, the flecks of red and green reflecting from a shiny gray tie or a cool green shadow on a resting hand. Each piece of fabric is backed by a heat-activated flooring adhesive. McCoy then tediously uses a clothing iron intermittently as she fleshes out each portrait to cement the fabric in place. Yes, a clothing iron and fabric, two things so easily fixed in the American psyche to a 1950’s housewife, have somehow found their way into the artistic process of this lesbian, vociferously liberal artist as she portrays her loved ones and gay men in drag. McCoy herself often jokes about the serendipity of her arrival into textile arts, thanks to her involvement with Fiber Artists of Miami Association (FAMA for short), a rather surprise move from materials like cement and asphalt. One cannot help but find some irony in this scenario, a twinkle of humor so easily associated with Shelly McCoy’s personality and her ability to find fun in her work. Despite the amount of different textures and fabrics employed in each work, McCoy still produces an overall image with seamless cohesion. These may even appear photorealistic to the viewer from a distance thanks to their figural accuracy. As the viewer approaches, however, they become something new; various layers of fabric are laid over one another, creating a sculptural dimensionality. The intuitive sense of color theory and shape, born out of the inability to blend fabrics the way one would mix paint, becomes visible. In some places, the viewer can find layers of textile which transcend surrounding layers, giving the effect that parts of the portrait were carved out to create a new shape, rather than layered onto in a calculated fashion. The image maintains the realism it had from the distance, but up close, provides the viewer with so much more ingenuity to contemplate.
Shelly’s first foray into this new medium for creating portraits was for The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s 2021 edition of their yearly textile group show, Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse, where she made a quilt panel portrait of Sojourner Truth (aptly titled The Truth, see above). It possessed the same textural quality and the novelty of an artist on a new path. However, the new portraits that McCoy has since completed (which now depict figures close to her in her personal and professional life) demonstrate a whole new level of dexterity and skill. They each boast a dynamic use of color, scale, and precision with each added piece of textile. These newer works, as is the case often with McCoy, tell the story of an artist who frequently works in experimental methods and who can hone these novel methods with each iteration.
Shelly McCoy has a very jovial, naturally comedic personality. She finds humor in any situation, and often takes advantage of this casual affinity to humor in her work; this series is no exception. McCoy’s tongue-in-cheek humor certainly shines through in Ménage À Trois a triptych that features a gay couple, local artists Troy Abbot and Enrique Gomez de Molina in heavy drag makeup. Troy is posed in an easily recognizable reference to the Virgin Mary, with a veil over his head and his hands in prayer, his face in an expression of false piety and mimicry. This Virgin Mary reference is a sort of double entendre; Troy is dressed up as a “mary”, a derogatory word for an effeminate man. If he is a Mary, then his partner needs to be a devil. The devil figure is loud and proud, with his arms out like wings, his chest bare, and a subtle grin on his face; he acts as a foil to the so-called pious Virgin Mary to his right. In the middle stands a mirror that is split in half, a half where you can see yourself next to the devil figure and another where you can be closer to the more angelic Mary figure. A simplistic analysis of this stylistic choice would say that this may be some association with the typical “angel and devil on each shoulder” trope. However, beneath lies a deeper meaning that plays into the relationship between the LGBTQ community and religiosity. Look at the demure, covered-up Mary, in a pose seen time and time again in religious relics, his face contorted into a sarcastic exaggeration of religious grief. His posture is nothing like that of the devil, who seems brash and free and self-empowered. In the context of Christian institutions that time and time again have asserted homosexuality to be a sin punishable by fire and brimstone, this piece suddenly becomes a defiant and comical statement against those who would deny someone their freedom just by virtue of who they are and who they love.
The Last Tragic Act rides along a similar current to Ménage À Trois by introducing a figure in a somewhat comedic context, while still allowing the viewer to derive a more serious meaning. The work tells the story of a gay male friend of McCoy’s who occasionally would get in drag for the joy of it at parties with friends. The subject of this portrait named the piece The Last Tragic Act because he alleged that it may be the last time he gets in drag. On one hand, seeing a man with drag makeup on, seated stoically in red pumps has an element of campy melodrama to it a la Nathan Lane in The Birdcage; oh how drag has changed since 1996, the year said film was released. What was once a subversive, underground play on gender norms performed exclusively within and almost exclusively for the LGBTQ community has now become part of pop culture, with staples like RuPaul’s Drag Race and Queen of World. Does the popularization of a cultural phenomenon, and its resulting sanitation, take the fun out of it for its progenitors? Does the gay community, which is at times rife with ageism and superficiality, leave enough room for its elders to still participate? These are examples of possible thoughts that could be running through the subject's head as he resigns himself to not dress up in drag any longer. Drag queens or not, these portraits all share one thing in common. They all portray people that are close to McCoy in one way shape or form. Incidentally, as someone who happens to be surrounded by other members of the Miami art community, some of these pieces also reflect this connection to the local community. One such example is Peter Evans, the portrait named after its subject, comic artist for Islander News and longtime romantic partner to gallerist Bernice Steinbaum. The influx of his story and his character are the renditions of comics that he has drawn. When discussing this piece, McCoy herself casually mentioned that she included a rendition of his own signature, while forgetting to include her own. What she perceived to be a funny slip of the mind indicates something much greater, that in some cases, these pieces take a keen focus on the people they are depicting in every sense of the word. These comics, coupled with the sneaky “BS no BS '' embroidered pillow to subtly reference Steinbaum, along with Evans’ sketch pad on his side in bed, relay intimacy in a format that is coded in his personhood. Peter Evans is not the only subject from McCoy’s relationship with Bernice Steinbaum; her granddaughter is similarly featured in a dynamic portrait that celebrates her burgeoning talents. A coy “portrait within a portrait” is featured on the girl's t-shirt, which portrays a rendition of a drawing that she made of her grandmother, avant-garde glasses and all.
Some other examples of this insertion of persona and charisma come to light in her portrait of the daughter of local artist Aurora Molina with her wide eyes and her backdrop of childhood drawings. Her portrait of her partner, Xonia Regalado, with Regalado’s typical sassy raised eyebrow makes a feature on Two Moms and their Daughter, an ode to the life and family that McCoy has created for herself with Regalado, their daughter, their dog, and the love between them all. In a time where many fear for the safety of families like this, a work that exemplifies an appreciation for a homosexual love story is a particularly poignant display.
NOTE: This piece was written in collaboration with Shelly so that she would have a body of writing to attach to this new series when she used it to apply for grants, residencies, or to include in a catalog. Shelly is a dear friend and an artist that I worked with throughout the seberal years that I worked as a gallery assistant.