The Frame Shop on Buffalo Street

Located at 414 W. Buffalo St.

Megan Shay: The Vertical Landscape

https://www.ateliershay.com/ for more information

Megan Shay is a painter and photographer who trained as a sculptor and ceramicist. She was born in Ithaca where she has lived all but 8 years while she was in Pittsburgh getting her MFA in Sculpture and working on the creation and opening of The Andy Warhol Museum. She has worked with art photography for thirty years. During Covid, she began painting with pastels and she recently started painting on her iPad.

Shay almost always works in series, regardless of media and her subject matter is usually the natural world. She often sees her images as allegories for the human condition whether it be the strange landscapes of the Canary Islands she associates with current politics or the beauty and pathos to be found at the end of life as captured in her photographic essay, “On Pavement”. Her visual inspiration is largely gathered from the travels she and her husband make through the year including her aerial landscapes in her series “From Above.” Her formal influences are the mid-century modernists such as the Bauhaus artists, Rothko and minimalists such as Agnes Martin, Robert Irwin and Richard Serra. Shay frequently plays at the edge of abstraction with her composition, making use of grids, canvas in thirds, strong verticals and macro details balanced against strong blocks of luminescent color.

Shay will speak about her work at The Frame Shop on November 6, Ithaca Gallery Night.