Shannon Kelley, a New Orleans based artist, crafter and Mardi Gras enthusiast, creates vibrant and exuberant pieces that take on a variety of forms. Makeup, Oil, Acrylics, and even face paints are just a few of the mediums she uses to bring her visions to life.
A quick scroll through her Instagram account and you’ll see the color and joy Shannon brings to her work and to the city of New Orleans.
As a professional artist with a home studio, even Shannon has experienced the challenges of being creative this past year, due to Covid restrictions.
“I’ve struggled to feel like creating sometimes. Now that it’s been almost a year of this covid reality, I’ve been able to settle into things and do some work. I’ve definitely been focusing more on ‘for fun projects’ than any real work though,” Shannon said.
In addition to her professional and commissioned work, Shannon knows it’s important to have her own creative projects.
“It’s self care for me when I’m doing something fun that I want to do for no other reason other than I want to do it. Playing with a makeup look, working on costuming, decorating my house; those all qualify as fun ME time.”
Shannon is using Elektra’s Power Pigments Plum, Iris, Passion Flower, and Paranormal. See below for the product links.
As important as that “me time” is for her well-being, Shannon admits that she has felt guilty when pursuing personal projects.
“You need a break from the work every so often even when the work is doing something you love. When you possess a skill set everyone loves to say, ‘Oh you should sell this, you should do that,’ and there is a real pressure to monetize everything you do. As an artist, I do a lot of commission based artwork and while that’s fun it’s really nice to be able to do things just for me or strictly for fun.”
Walk by Shannon’s house and ‘fun’ is a word that is sure to pop in your head. You’ll see a brightly colored, super-sized garden that is adorning her front porch as part of the Krewe of House Floats. In just one week, she created and installed the nearly dozen ornately-painted giant flowers.
With so many New Orleanians creating and painting their own float decorations this season, the flowers that are hand-crafted by experienced artisans truly stand out. And Shannon’s flowers, and particularly her house float, do just that.
Of course, Shannon has had years of experience creating larger than life flowers with Krewe des Fleur and the Magical Moving Garden.
Krewe des Fleurs is a NOLA-based costume and performance collective. Members build larger than life costumes in the image of a different flower, designed as one blank prototype and brought to life through their own imagination and inspiration.
This collective has also been a great source of connection during a difficult year where many have had to face isolation.
“With Krewe des Fleurs, it’s been so nice to have some semblance of normalcy in this otherwise completely not normal time. There’s been a lot of zooming and some socially distant, masked outdoor hangs.”
To keep community spirits up during Carnival, Krewe des Fleurs has found a way to safely spread some joy throughout the 2021 Mardi Gras season.
Since Twelfth Night, members have been hiding past commemorative flowers, #seedsasbeads, and decorated terracotta pots, scavenger hunt style.
The group is passionate about sustainability and green throws and has been using up scraps from this year’s costume builds to recreate the old floral throws instead.
“We’ve even managed to continue to grow our garden this year by reworking some of our past designs and building new flowers.”
Krewe des Fleurs will be hiding garden goodies around town through Mardi Gras day. To participate, go to Facebook and join the “The Secret Garden” Group. New clues and “throws” are posted daily!
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