My name is Shelby Marie Skumanich.
I am an artist and poet living in Northern Colorado.
I work with images, materials, and language.
I follow the threads between place, memory, and identity.
Photography is a practice of attention.
I look outward, tracing the ways personal and collective histories are held in the landscape; how place shapes us, and how we, in turn, leave our mark.
Quilting is a practice of transformation.
Working with fragments, I stitch together abstract narratives of my interior life. Each piece becomes a record of change, a way of holding what has been lived through and reassembling it into something new.
Poetry is where these threads converge.
I return to language as a tool for listening. I name what resists easy definition, sit inside contradiction, and let meaning emerge through detail.
Identity is not fixed.
Everything and everyone becomes.
We are constructed, unraveled, and reimagined again and again.
I am interested in how we live inside our own stories with intention
and how we might rewrite them to live lives we thought were only imaginary.
I received my BFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design, where I studied photography, new media, bookmaking, and art history. My work has been exhibited across the United States, and my quilts and photographs have received national recognition.
Alongside my studio practice, I work in communications and project management.
Outside of my work, I study tarot, spend time in nature, and share my life with Elmer, my Flemish Giant rabbit.