Growing up in Parkville was no obstacle to Rick Shelley becoming a sort of Renaissance Kid. At the local library he found harpsichord records which he'd play at slow speeds until he understood each piece. Seeing Cleopatra enthralled him, not for Elizabeth Taylor, but because of the grandeur of Hollywood's take on Egypt. And Serenissima: The Worlds of Rick Shelley—with its surreal board games and tableau, glass and metal insects, meticulously perfect terracotta sculptures, and painstakingly crafted mosaics— underlines the fact that Rick Shelley is an interesting artist because he's an interested person, motivated by lifelong affinities for art, ancient history, early music, and storytelling. Indeed, it's hard to tell that some of the pieces included in this show were created when Shelley was a child, because as a young person he already possessed a very adult commitment to fine detail.
The art show is both cohesive and wide-ranging: a satisfying aesthetic experience. But Shelley’s live shows are the clearest window into the quirky and beautiful preoccupations of his mind. Within a tented theater pitched in the center of the gallery stood Shelley's ornate miniature theater—the Theater Serenissima, flanked by masks andlayered with anticipation-building curtains. Shelley composed music and created lighting and sets worthy of any full-size theater. It is not a puppet show, but something between a diorama and a moving painting. When he first showed the theater to friend and author Laura Amy Schlitz (who collaborated on the writing aspect of early shows) they realized that Serenissima made everything inside it look special. "We'd put a banana or an old shoe in there, light it, and sit back and say, 'Wow. That banana looks amazing. What's the story with that old shoe?'" The most recent production included two gorgeously executed Italian myths and "Delusions of Infestation," a very funny story of a germ-phobic nun.
Initially inspired by a neighbor's simple small-scale version of the Nutcracker, Shelley used to stage the shows only for friends. His move to public shows at AVAM and the Creative Alliance has translated well. If you missed this chance to see Shelley’s work, know that an updated production of a play he’s done before, Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, may be in the works, along with other chances to peek through his kaleidoscopic artistic lens: “I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing in a delightful way, I want to see where it goes for my own passion. And the reason audiences do like it? Probably because it pleased me and I don't think I'm so different from everybody else."
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