About Shane de Leon

DeLeon is an artist, musician, and the owner of Kirks’ Grocery, a contemporary art gallery and performance space in Billings, MT. He works on paper with ink, glue, acrylic, fabric, and watercolor, and his visual work has been exhibited in San Diego, Portland, Billings, and in Milan and Varese, Italy. He has also performed over 1300 shows across the US and in 12 countries with his bands, Rollerball and Miss Massive Snowflake. De Leon approaches each day as an opportunity to fill with spontaneous creative decisions. According to the artist, “Every choice we make has the potential to make our lives more meaningful, more profound.”

Juror's Statement

Shane De LeonThank you to Leanne Gilbertson for the opportunity to select the artwork for this year’s MSUB Juried Student Exhibition. I run Kirks’ Grocery, an art gallery that focuses on community, creativity, and contemporary arts in Billings, MT. Usually when I am selecting work for the gallery, I already know the artist, or their work, and I have sought them out. This was a different experience, and to be truthful, a more emotional process than I expected.

What was my criteria? Were my tastes important, or was I judging each artist on their own potential/vision? I found something in each of the 16 submitted artists’ works that led me to include one piece by each artist. I wanted to encourage each of the students in the direction I saw their strongest ideas. A few of the artists were successfully experimenting in diverse areas and had all their submissions included.

I found the theme of time, self, and identity in much of this work. Who are we? What do we value? How do we go forward, and what have we done? We know Consumerism is crushing us, but continue to scroll through advertisements, unconsciously projecting and internalizing idealized versions of ourselves on small screens. Our lives are so fractured by the hectic and edge-of- survival pace that we conduct our lives with that it is no surprise that young artists would focus on existence, their place in it, and the ways to escape it. I adore the ability of Oh, I Can Fit There to make me feel I’m introverted, somewhere I don’t want to be, and am imagining myself as different objects in the room to escape the noise. The willingness to wear Artfacts’ glasses with nails in them, the acceptance of destroying ourselves, because really, who gives a f…, our Feelings are a trophy, to be hung for our viewer’s pleasure.

These stories are post-post-modern. We ironically laugh at our myriad selves, and obsessively document the splinters. The Dollhouse is a graphic novel of information, but what’s the story, or more importantly, from whose viewpoint is the observer seeing the story?

Not all the artists ask these questions. Some are focusing on technique or relying on their influences. For me, I love when artists push boundaries and visually emote their inner selves, questioning the world they live in. Is it this way? Does it have to be this way? And where do I fit in?

Thanks again for this opportunity. I hope each of the artists continues to create work. Some of them will stop or take long breaks of not creating. Others will make it their lives and their passion regardless of money or fame. I believe Art is a conversation we are having with ourselves. Sometimes, to really figure yourself out, you have to put it on paper, and see what your unconscious releases, because even though we may plan for our work to be viewed through a certain lens, every observer brings their own experiences to the viewing. Should we be Screaming, Singing, Sighing? I feel the theme of this work, is that we should probably do all three, then laugh about it later.