Recent BFA Studio Art graduate and recipient of the Department of Art’s Purcell Art Achievement Award, Kellan Shanahan, has hit the road running as he takes charge of his own artistic practice.  Shanahan sold several works from his first solo exhibition, “A Church Not Made by Hands” since graduating Chapman in 2013.

The drawings and sculpture in the show Shanahan describes are “inspired by the mysticism of geometry and transfinite mathematics, as well as the imagery of cosmology and theoretical physics, the works express a striking similarity in the form of things far beyond our immediate experience, in both the very large and the very small. These patterns in reality are deeply mysterious and intoxicating to the human mind, but what I find the most profound is that they are also aesthetically beautiful. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence. Beauty, it seems, is a fundamental characteristic of reality.”

Currently Shanahan is working as an assistant for Michael Stutz, a prominent bronze sculptor in Southern California, and recently he assisted with the creation and installation of four 7 foot tall bronze heads at Texas Tech University in Lubbock Texas.

Check out the New York Times article featuring Shanahan.

Congratulations Kellan Shanahan!