Originally from Huntsville, Alabama Shea Brill lives and works in a small town in southern New Mexico. Shea’s interests in facilitating multidisciplinary community projects and exploring her own engagement with creative processes fuel her belief that the arts are a powerful tool in reconciling trauma and challenging entrenched narratives on both an intimately personal level and in society at large. Shea facilitates workshops and classes in nontraditional settings that support and encourage participants to view themselves as inherently curious, creative, and adaptive beings using art-making as a means to discover and discuss. Within her own art-making practice, Shea often uses written and spoken word, movement, sewing, ceramics, painting, and drawing to explore themes of connection, mental health, racial and gender inequality, and how our ability to access and express during “flow” states can shift our understanding of the world and people around us.
Skills & Experience
Visual Arts Coordinator | Barking Legs Theatre | January 2020 - October 2020
Directed visual arts related work, including the organization's first Annual Report and renovated the theater’s website, coordinated theatre facilities and daily activities with musicians, artists, and facilitators, and assisted in program development
Isolated Incidents / Confined Creations Project | Summer 2020
To support artists during the quarantine, I established a residency program for three artists to create installation work in the bathrooms of the theater
Featured Artist | CoCha Magazine | To be printed September 2020
Visiting Teaching Artist | Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center | February - March 2020
Studio Assistant / Artist Facilitator | Mark Making | August 2015 – June 2020
Assisted and lead classes with underserved populations (including with men at the Hamilton County Jail, in Hamilton County public schools, women incarcerated at The Next Door, clients of Orange Grove, and participants of the Mental Health Courts Sexual Trauma Track), created collaborative, large-scale public art works (including Birds of Freedom created by men in Hamilton County Jail, Stove Works Mural Project created by teens, and the traffic cabinet Life Energy Series) and assisted in coordinating all personnel, studio, and office related work
Founding Member | Art X Change | 2018 – October 2020
Facilitated conversations with students from CGLA about the intersection of activism, art, and issues in our communities and collaboratively created installation work hung in Barking Legs Theater for two opening nights
Workshop Facilitator (Blind Contour Drawings) | Stove Works | July 2019
Led fifteen participants in drawing exercises exploring exhibition 52 Hertz Whale
Selected Artist Presenter | Sideshow Slideshow | May 2019
Presented ongoing series of Blind Contour Drawings
Assistant Art Teacher | AIM Center Inc. | January 2017 – December 2018
Supported teaching artist, Judy Mogul, by assisting, leading, and developing arts projects with members, most notably the stop-motion film, Aim Center Shorts, featured at the Chattanooga Film Festival and the recently published One Hundred Views of Chattanooga
Selected Artist | Artists as Change Agents, EMCarts | Fall 2018
Participated in multi-weekend explorations of EMCarts capabilities to strengthen artists’ abilities to effectively support, engage, and empower communities
Art Teacher | Little Miss Mags’ Preschool | August 2014 – May 2017 | Chattanooga, TN
Developed and implemented art projects engaging preschool aged students rooted in skill development- creative, collaborative, problem solving, and fine motor
Assistant Art Teacher | Salvation Army | January 2014 – May 2014 | Chattanooga, TN
Assisted primary art teacher, Rebekah Rapp, in art projects with homeless populations
Education
Art Education, BS | University of Tennessee in Chattanooga | 2013-2017
Received Arts Education licensure in state of Tennessee
Recipient of James E. Gamble Award (2017) recognizing one Arts Education student a year
Studied Abroad | Florence, Italy | January 2015 – May 2015
Student Advisor Art Education | 2014 - 2017
Sole Arts Education major nominated three consecutive years
Chattanooga Placemaking Week Scholarship | October 2019