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00:01I have no idea.
00:04We had to pay $7.00 each.
00:06I'll be right back.
00:08I'm gonna call you.
00:09Bye.
00:10See you.
00:11Bye.
00:13See you.
00:14Bye.
00:15Bye.
00:16See you.
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00:22Bye.
00:23I'll be right back.
00:24I'll be right back.
00:25I know you're in there, there it is, that's it, that's it.
00:54Hello, my name is Shana McCoy and you're here at my solo exhibition at the St. Quid's Hillhouse
00:58Gallery out in Pasadena, California.
01:02And I have decided to share these works.
01:06They are all together in a series titled When There's Nothing Left, which I want the viewer
01:12to finish and feel like we are all we have as family, as community and friends.
01:19So I decided to depict a lot of moments and a lot of still experiences between family
01:24and friends where they're embracing one another.
01:28Here you'll see a painting of my mother and myself when I was little.
01:32I'm the first daughter and the oldest.
01:35And throughout the exhibition, you also see more paintings of my mom and I.
01:41So we also have these little works, which I did start out making when I first started
01:47painting.
01:48They were at a scale of five inches by seven inches.
01:52And I did them for a benefit in Minneapolis for the houseless community.
01:56So in high school, we did 30 paintings and all of those went to a benefit called Art
02:02for Shelter.
02:04And we were able to provide housing and food for the houseless community in the Twin Cities.
02:10So that's why I keep doing them because they always remind me of home and to continue to
02:15do something not only for myself, but for other people.
02:18I'm a big giver and a big lover.
02:20So I always think about other people and through these works, you'll see that this is a painting
02:27of my grandpa and I.
02:29He's also here today from Chicago.
02:32This is a painting of my mom and my cousin Kaylee and my grandmother who recently passed
02:39in May with my cousin who's also named after her, Anita.
02:45Two friends at a wedding, I've started to take more photographs as my own references
02:50to start painting from to extend the archive that we have for my grandpa.
02:56He is my main inspiration.
02:58I go to a lot of his photographs as references for the pieces and I think about 80 to 90%
03:04of my paintings are based after his work.
03:07He's here today, so it's really fun to see him look at the work and enjoy it and take
03:12it in and recognize that this is also his work as well.
03:16So we have a lifelong collaboration and that's so beautiful to me and I'm so lucky to be
03:21able to do that because his love for my family also became my love for my family and how
03:26he sees the world is how I began to see it as well.
03:30So we kind of like work back and forth and I enjoy that a lot.
03:35And we have my friend and her brother, my friend and her little brother's friend.
03:43Sometimes I paint other people's family as a decision to step outside and recognize another
03:49moment or experience that another person was having.
03:53Here we have more paintings of friends.
03:57This is myself and my friend Brianna and my grandma and I at my last solo exhibition which
04:04was here in Los Angeles in 2022.
04:08I needed to have this here because it was an important part of my grieving process.
04:14As my grandma can't be here today, I made sure that she was still with us and I think
04:19that's something very special because our energy is very much here and I'm very thankful
04:24for her.
04:26This is my cousin and myself, Tanisha.
04:33And then I have this large painting piece here which is my great-grandmother and my
04:38little brother.
04:39My great-grandmother, she is not really, she doesn't like getting on planes so we send
04:45her lots of pictures and videos.
04:47This is a photograph that I've taken of them recently.
04:51They're from Minnesota so you always see the jerseys of Vikings, they're big Vikings
04:55fans.
04:56And I thought this was such a very, very sweet experience to watch them and how they bond.
05:04She I believe is 84 and he's 15 and just to see them have conversations back and forth
05:09and how he's so curious about her and she just, you know, spends time with him telling
05:14him stories.
05:15I think that's something that I enjoy.
05:17I've been enjoying seeing, or I can't talk anymore, excuse me, I have been enjoying watching
05:23them grow together.
05:28And then this is my cousin D and Z at their wedding.
05:35They are twins if you can't already tell.
05:39I thought that moment was very sweet.
05:41We also bond over food when we break bread with each other and we bond over moments of
05:46doing each other's hair or just holding each other simply like this photo you see here
05:51of my grandpa holding my aunt.
05:55This is the first painting that I started for this whole series and I just admire how
05:59he holds us and also photographs everything throughout our livelihoods.
06:10So what's very personal and why did you leave the faces blank?
06:19It's a happy mistake.
06:20So I went to arts high school in Minnesota, it's called Perpich Center for Arts Education
06:24and I wanted to execute badly to paint real faces and to paint exactly what was on the
06:32reference photo and I couldn't do that.
06:34We thought that you were worthy of praise as a student, you know, in your 12th grade
06:38year of high school, that if you could paint exactly what was on that photograph that
06:43you could do anything and that you were a cool kid because you could paint that thing
06:48and I just couldn't and I tried and I tried and I was new to the material, to oil paint.
06:54I couldn't afford it coming from my lower middle class background.
06:58I've never used oil paint before my 12th grade year in high school and we had a project where
07:03we had to knock out 30 paintings and pick our subject matter and so we had so much
07:08time to do so and I decided to pick up my grandfather's photographs from my mother's
07:13home and take them back to school and just sit there and paint, paint, paint and I said
07:19I'm just going to do away with the faces, I don't know how to do them and I thought
07:23that was very much like, I didn't think it was art.
07:26I wasn't confident in it and that made me so frustrated as a youth in the arts being
07:30surrounded by so many other talented individuals that I couldn't do that thing and I had a
07:36teacher who came to our class and she was like, she was amazing, her name was Megan
07:43Rye and she's also a painter and she recognized that I was really putting in these efforts
07:48to attempt something and she's like you don't need to put facial features on it for it to
07:54be art, to be considered art and I thought wow, I'm just sitting here crying in class
08:00like oh my gosh, she thinks it's art and she thinks it's beautiful and she was like
08:05you have to continue to do this, it's uniquely you and I think there's something there and
08:11so since 2012 I've been painting without facial features, that's my happy mistake,
08:18just carrying it on my back, you know, I've never felt the need to paint faces because
08:23so many other artists do that thing and here I am just putting in the emotions of it through
08:29the brush strokes and filling in the facial features with the cheeks and the impressions
08:35of the forehead and the chin and the ear structure and how the hair lays and the patternation
08:41so it's more of a feeling than anything.
08:44Yeah, happy coincidence because it's perfect, yeah.
08:48It's great.
08:50And how did you come to, yeah, you've mentioned a little bit the art school but have you always
08:53this urge to be an artist?
08:56Yes, I've always been a creative growing up, my family always knew to give me creative
09:02birthday gifts so I had my hands on everything from beads to weaving to painting and drawing
09:09and pastels and they just let me have everything and I'm so thankful that they nourished that
09:16creative spirit that I had growing up because they could have told me hey, you have to,
09:20you know, think about other things and they decided that's okay, this is her and we want
09:25to fill her cup with that so I thank my mom and my dad and the rest of my family for giving
09:31me that push and recognizing like this is my thing and to let me have that.
09:36A lot of people think that you'll be a starving artist and that it won't work out and I think
09:42being creative is cathartic, I think it's medicinal, it helps me through migraine, having
09:49lost many family members and it just feels so good to like love on each other and celebrate
09:55each other in this way, yeah.
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