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Online Articles

Here are some articles on my painted and carved American folk art:

  • "Carving Out a Life: Reflections of an Ithaca Wood-Carver" reprinted with permission from Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore Vol. 35:3-4
  • "Serving up a Slice of Everyday Life".  This article is reprinted with permission from the Folk Art Messenger (#99, Vol. 29, No 3, Spring 2020), the Folk Art Society of America, and Margaret Day Allen. Back issues of the Folk Art Messenger may be ordered by accessing the Folk Art Society's website: www.folkart.org."
  • 2013 article in the Ithaca Times The Ithaca Times article was written by Edward Hower, a skilled writer who has a fine way with words. Here's a link to Hower's most recent book "Slick", featuring my artwork on the cover.
  • 1999 New York Times article that gives some sense of where my work (mentioned at the very end of the article, page 3) fits into the history of  American folk art. In this article Holland Cotter wrote: "If much of the 20th-century work in the show is fanciful, it also touches on real life in all its bumptious oddity and warmth. Such is the case with the painted relief  Sullivan's Diner IV (1989) by Mary Michael Shelley, 49, an artist from Ithaca, N.Y., who has a degree in English from Cornell and is a practicing social worker. The piece, which conjures up 19th-century shop signs and the sculptures of the contemporary artist Red Grooms, depicts the interior of a local restaurant that Ms. Shelley frequents. She chose the subject, she says, because restaurants are places 'where people, isolated during the rest of their day, could come together just to "be" and feel a sense of instant belonging.''
  • Article in Nashville Arts June 2010 issue about Beverly Keel and Ronnie Stein, collectors of my work. Mention of my work and a picture of Red Robin Diner piece.
  • Highlights magazine for children article.