Visual Art – San Francisco
BIO: I grew up in remote Army outposts all over the world, during the height of the Cold War; Saudi Arabia, Japan, Washington, D.C., Oklahoma and Hawaii were a few of the many disparate places my parents and I called home. My father, Col. Walter J. (Bo) Shelton, first disarmed, then contracted, nuclear weapons and other munitions for the U.S. government. His career had a profound impact on my aesthetic sensibility; my first great artistic loves were military insignia and symbols, Soviet propaganda posters, and the early-1980\'s Eastern Bloc aesthetic that inspired bands such as Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. Later, this paired well with a taste for skateboard graphics and Golden Age Illustration. While I\'ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil, I started painting in oils at fifteen, and soon had my work exhibited in several nationally-renowned galleries and museums, including a student exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (Incidentally, my first job was decorating special-occasion cakes for the Joint Chiefs of Staff while my father was assigned to The Pentagon.)
Not long after I started drawing, I discovered I could sing and act; I\'ve been doing both since I was six. My painting career was interrupted by a ten-year tour of duty in rock and roll, fronting my hard rock band, The Mimsies. I now play keys and synth for SF-local New Romantic outfit, Roadside Memorial.