Nickel Plate Arts To Feature Three Artists Of The Month In April

Nickel Plate Arts is featuring three artists of the month in April. The artists of the month include Sheldon Shalley, Joy Tilson Cobb, and Mark Timmis, and each of their exhibits will each be featured at a different Nickel Plate Arts showcase location. Information on the exhibit dates, receptions, and artist details are available below.

STEPHENSON HOUSE: Sheldon Shalley

Sheldon Shalley’s creative style of painting emerges from one of several methods: pulling images from his dreams, images he meets in meditation sessions, images he sees during Shamanic journeying and images inspired by models and photographs. Shalley is a psychotherapist, and he uses dreams, mindfulness, hypnotherapy, shamanic healing, and energy medicine to help his clients. With these tools, he is able to take these mindful journeys himself, using art to connect with parts of the psyche that can express and heal our painful stories. His art honors his encounters and experiences during his dreams and meditations, which helps him connect with them more deeply.

Shalley wasn’t always an artist—he was taught how to paint in a dream 20 years ago. A dream so vivid that once he shared it with his dream group, they told him he had to paint. While Shalley explained that he didn’t know how, they advised him to “just do what you did in the dream.” He did, and as they say, “the rest is history.”

For his Nebulas and Stardust exhibit, Shalley uses photos of outer space as his inspiration. Quantum Physics suggests that all things and beings are connected and that our minds are connected with a cosmic mind. Carl Sagan, one of our generation’s greatest science educators, popularized one unbelievable fact—we are stardust. Sagan says that most of the atoms in our body were formed inside of stars, supernovae, and neutron star collisions. In fact, scientists who have measured the distribution of essential elements of life in over 150,000 stars in the Milky Way claim that 97% of the human body consists of stardust.

Shalley has created paintings inspired by photos of nebula and stardust to honor our connection to the stars. As an energy worker, he often sees energy in matter. “When working with a client, I may see what is vibrating in their field. All matter is energy at its deepest level,” he says.

The full Nebulas and Stardust exhibit can be seen in the Stephenson House Wednesday through Friday from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. You can meet Shalley during the April First Friday event from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Stephenson House on Nickel Plate Arts campus. Shalley will also host a special Visual Journey of Discovery through Fairy Stardust event on April 22 at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on the Nickel Plate Arts campus during Welcome to Fairyville. These 30-minute creative sessions are for young artists in grades 1-6. No registration required.

Dates: April 5 to 29, 2023

Images provided – Nebula and Stardust

Headshot, Sheldon Shalley

MEYER NAJEM: Mark Timmis

Mark Timmis has been involved in the arts since the 1970s. After attending Indiana University for undergrad, he received his Master of Arts degree from Western Michigan University. He taught as an art professor in Evansville before transitioning into the IT field.

Timmis took a 15-year hiatus from exercising his artistic abilities before moving back into it as a hobby. Having wanted to get back into art for some time, he got a small studio at The Stutz in Indianapolis and decided to see where his creativity would take him. Some of his first pieces are included in his Mark Timmis: One Man Show exhibit and were inspired by artist Robert Motherwell.

Being a very process-oriented person, Timmis feels that is where his worlds of technology and art connect. “Painting for me is creating a problem and solving it, plain and simple,” he says. “While it brings a lot of satisfaction, it can also bring terror.”

Timmis doesn’t begin creating any of his paintings with an end in mind; he embraces the present moment and loves to see what surprises will come along the way when he allows himself to be in the flow, focusing fully on his creations and playing around with different types of paints, textures, techniques, and colors in each piece. He embraces the belief that his artwork is the only thing in his life that he can honestly say is all him.

“Our experiences inform every aspect of us, and I make art to fill a place in me that belongs only to me,” Timmis says. “A place where no one can tell me what is right or what is wrong. I own it. It is me, and I am it.”

His full exhibit can be seen at Meyer Najem, located at 11787 Lantern Road in Fishers on the 2nd floor, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. You can meet Timmis at his free public reception in June (exact date and time TBA) in the Meyer Najem 2nd floor gallery.

Dates: April 3 to June 29, 2023

Images provided – The Deep Blue

Headshot, Mark Timmis

FOUR DAY RAY: Joy Tilson Cobb

Growing up with parents who were both musicians, art has always been a thread throughout Tilson Cobb’s life. Her parents encouraged her to start with a foundation in music, so she decided to first learn how to play the piano.

Tilson Cobb also took voice lessons and eventually learned how to play the harp and saxophone. She went to college to be an opera singer or musical theater performer, but she never pursued either career due to her focus on her family after marriage. As an adult, she began finding new ways of expressing her creativity and fed her passion through the art of quilling, crocheting, designing window treatments, and learning the intricacies of wallpaper.

Tilson Cobb’s experience as a studio assistant for an artist who did silk painting and had designed a clothing line is what guided her in what she truly wanted to do. Her newfound love for colors and her natural talent for replicating led her to try watercolor painting, needle felting, and wet felting, and she even began studying renaissance scrolls–but she realized these practices did not have the ability to fulfill her passions.

Acrylic pouring is something Tilson Cobb saw on the internet when she was researching abstract art inspiration for a large painting she was making for a beach condo. She felt inspired by those who would freely go through the process, putting it all out there and sharing their work with others. Not only did she benefit from watching the process of these other artists, but this inspiration is also what ultimately led to the creation and naming of her exhibit.

“You can get pretty results as a beginner, even if you don’t see yourself as an artist,” Tilson Cobb says. “Free Flowing [is the exhibit title] because it not only describes the art itself—the flowing water feel of most of my work—but also the process has to be free flowing.The paints combine in unpredictable ways as they’re poured onto the canvas, and that’s when you need to be willing to let go and possibly head in another direction than what you’d planned.  It’s a cliché, but you really do have to ‘go with the flow’!”

The full Free Flowing exhibit can be seen at Four Day Ray Brewing, located at 11671 Lantern Road in Fishers, Sunday and Monday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and Friday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. You can meet Tilson Cobb at her free public reception on Monday, May 22 from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Four Day Ray.

Dates: April 1 to June 29, 2023

Images provided – Serenity

Headshot, Joy Tilson Cobb