Local artist hopes to make big impact with his work

 Local artist hopes to make big impact with his work

By Kaleb Causey for The News Star
August 22, 2015

Photo: MARGARET CROFT

For local artist Vitus Shell, art is two different worlds divided by the color of the sky.

“During the day, I’m a graphic designer. I do party fliers, business cards, banners and stuff like that,” he said. “And late evenings I usually do the business of being an artist.”

What Shell calls the business of being an artist consists of more than just doing his personal art.

“I sit down and research grants and I look up proposals,” he said. “A lot of museums, galleries and colleges will put out callings for artists. I put out packages to do shows like that. And I work on my own art at night. I might work until 2 or 3 a.m.”

Shell, a Monroe native, has been creating art for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve been doing art since I was about three,” he said. “I can remember doing little drawings and all kinds of crazy stuff. In elementary school, one of my teachers made me draw my classmates because she recognized that I could draw. In high school, I got into the talented arts and it became my thing.”

From high school, Shell studied at the Memphis College of Art, where he learned about all mediums of art.

“When I first got into college, I wanted to be a comic book artist,” he said. “But my hand is not steady enough to do comic books. My hand is more painterly.”

Now, Shell’s art is mixed-medium and focuses on urban issues.

“Right now I’m doing a series called ‘Slim Crowism,’” he said. “It’s the affects of Jim Crow on modern times, but through a hip-hop lens. I think of my work as me being a rapper and being able to talk about social issues.”

Much like Shell’s two worlds of art, there are also two worlds of hip-hop. There are hip-hop artists who focus on social issues and there are others who focus on street rap.

Shell said he likes to combine the worlds of hip-hop and use his art to talk about social issues through tales from the streets. That’s why he uses hip-hop videos as inspiration.

“It’s all urban figures,” he said. “It’s usually about either a current topic, like something that might be going on in the news, or something I just see myself. I might take something that is in a rap video and parallel it against different times and dealing with it in that way — really showing that it’s not anything new or why it’s happening.

“When I’m thinking about my work, I’m always thinking about my parents saying, ‘You guys aren’t like we were.’ Which is really a lie. I like to make those parallels between our time and their time.”

Shell said he likes using mixed-mediums, such as drawing, painting and collage, to create his art.

“I don’t think of myself as a traditional artist, because I’m not,” he said. “Traditional artists were usually white, heterosexual males. When I sit down, I’m not trying to close myself down and say I’m just a painter. So, I think about different materials when I’m trying to create a piece and speak my language.”


Shell’s goal in life is simple: to not need to rely on his daytime art.

“My goal is to be able to do this full-time, but also do things in the community that could change the community,” he said. “I like being a role model to show black kids that it’s more out there than growing up and being a football player, basketball player or rapper.

“Most people have this skill set at kids, but if it’s not nurtured, they’ll leave it alone and lose it. If more kids could see that, they could use this skill to do so many other things. Art is everything around us.”