Shelby Austin Tourney

Shelby Austin Tourney, featured in the Time Capsule exhibition, was born in central Nebraska. She now lives and works in Lincoln, Nebraska. Austin Tourney earned her BA in Studio Art from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 2021. During her time at Nebraska Wesleyan, Austin Tourney won a Boatright Award and was featured in the Flintlock: Literary and Visual Arts Journal. Austin Tourney is a multi-media artist focusing in painting and fiber arts. Austin Tourney has shown her work in Lux Center for the Arts, Clover24, Elder Gallery, and Kepler Gallery.

Austin Tourney’s work explores the thin line between comfort and discomfort and how these emotions coexist. Relying on memory, her current body of work creates spaces that reflect a melding of past and present that has never truly existed. Within these spaces she engages with routine and repetition to find the patterns that have stuck since childhood. Austin Tourney’s art practice is a journey of self-discovery and a catalog of change.


Artist Statement

Uncertainty is a part of life in which we never outgrow. We begin to form habits for how we react at a young age - how do we cope amid instability? Reflection pulls my current and past-self closer together, realizing that I turn to the same routines and objects as an act of control, placating my need for stability. I explore the intricacies of comfort and discomfort, and how they coexist. How coping exists seen and unseen by others. This exploration within my practice allows me to bridge the gap between who I was and who I am, acting as a mirror throughout different stages of my life. Each piece is a catalog of memories and spaces that no longer exist, items that enter and exit the cultural zeitgeist. The spaces are familiar, but uncanny, devoid of then or now, living somewhere between it all. The obscuring of time and age questions how little I have changed at my core. This exploration of nostalgia is not with the hope to regress into the past, but rather to acknowledge the importance of an object to a time and place, appreciating it throughout time.

These moments of self-discovery become cathartic and continue to influence my work and process even as the content evolves. The evolution of my work is directly correlated to my journey of self-discovery, each piece a better understanding of self and a catalog of change. This examination of self expands beyond me and explores the culture at large, better understanding how we as a community find ways to cope and create our own stability, if only for a moment.


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