Meet Shawne Camp

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawne Camp. 

Hi Shawne, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
My passion for art started as a young child living in Toledo Ohio in the 1970s. Art was my escape from a lonely life living in a mobile home in a cruddy trailer park with a single parent and younger brother. The best part of the weekday was when the Book Mobile would come to the trailer park and I’d treat it like it was the ice cream truck. I would pick out a book and imagine I was any place but that trailer park. Don’t get me wrong I feel my dad was doing his best but he was always working even when he was home. I really looked forward to each weekend where I’d spend time attending art classes at the Toledo Museum of Art. It was there I could put my daily life behind me and express myself in a positive way. The museum was my sanctuary and when class was over, I’d roam the galleries sketching different works of art sometimes hoping nobody would pick me up and I’d just live there. After art classes, the next best thing was going to my grandparents’ home or my aunt and uncle’s for the remainder of the weekend. Here I felt safe, surrounded by love, encouraged to create and home-cooked meals. Sometimes the kids around my aunt’s house would pay me .50 cents or a dollar to do drawings of album covers like Iron Maiden. At the age of 12, I was sent to live with my mom in another state where I had my own room, a desk complete with art supplies, and a dog named Josh. My mom and I eventually ended up living in Colorado and after high school, I attended the Colorado Institute of Art. As a young adult in the early 1990s trying to figure out my life I answered an ad in the paper for a garbage man since art wasn’t exactly paying the rent. This was one of the best jobs ever! Riding around on the back of a garbage truck with the wind blowing through my hair and the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. The other bonus was the old saying “one person’s trash is another treasure”. Most of my apartment was furnished with stuff I found and Christmas gifts for my mom consisted of an old Singer sewing machine and other random oddities I saved from going to the landfill. One day while on our garbage route heavy rains had washed a large piece of sandstone into the middle of the road and as I was moving it to the side a vision of creating something out of it came to me. We had a cage on the side of the garbage truck where we’d collect recycling. I needed to get this stone home so I through all the recycling into the back of the truck with the trash and nestled my stone into the cage. I had never sculpted anything other than clay but I had this vision of the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. I absolutely love the desert southwest and spent a lot of time exploring the areas around Cortez, CO, Santa Fe, NM, and Taos so this played a huge role in creating my first sculpture. I used a flathead screwdriver and a regular hammer to create my Mesa Verde. Once completed I took my sculpture to a gallery where they agreed to sell it on consignment. A few days later they phoned and said it had sold. I was hooked and knew I had much to learn so I left Colorado Springs for a week and headed to Southern Colorado and New Mexico with a plan to learn as much as possible about stone sculpting tools and techniques and visiting art galleries. Eventually, I was sculpting in all my spare time and selling works in galleries and to friends. By chance one day in the mid-1990s I was offered an opportunity to create and instruct a stone sculpting curriculum at a community college in Colorado Springs. The class was incredible but the cost eventually became prohibitive for the school. Fast forward to 2019 where my life came full circle and my wife and I moved to Michigan from NY. We bought a home with a large outbuilding which became my sculpture studio. I took my wife to the Toledo Museum of Art to show her the classrooms that were my sanctuary. I met an instructor while there and expressed my gratitude for what these art classes meant to me as a child. The instructor invited me to be a visiting artist and do a presentation at the museum. It was surreal! I went from a student there to a professional artist sharing my story with others. With the love and support of my amazing wife I currently run a business named “Juniper Mesa Creations” here in Michigan where I create sculptures in various stone from around the world and sell nationally and internationally. This past June I received first place in the sculpture category at the Crosby Festival of Art in Toledo. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the struggles I’ve faced over the years before becoming a homeowner is space to create. Hammering on a chisel in an apartment or neighborhood isn’t always welcomed so there were quite a few years where I could only paint or do photography. On the plus side of this, I had submitted a photo to Smithsonian Magazine for an international photo contest, and mine was selected as a runner-up and had a short feature on the Smithsonian Channel on a show titled “Picture Perfect”. The other was to learn to filter creative feedback from personal opinions. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My work often invokes the feeling of Inuit, Aztec, and Native American. I work in a lot of different stones but a few of my favorites are Italian Marble and Alabaster from Utah and Italy. Many of my sculptures retain some of the natural stone in its original form to show viewers what the sculpture emerged from. I very rarely do any commissioned pieces and when I do I have to ensure I have artistic freedom to create something the way I see it and not something that is forced or not authentic to myself. I’m most proud of when a buyer sends me a photo of a sculpture they purchased in its new home and the joy it brings them. 

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
This is a big question! My wife Janay and dogs Rango and Cooper bring me the most joy. I also love riding bikes so much that in 2009 I rode my bicycle solo from the Golden Gate Bridge in SF to Washington DC to raise money for the American Lung Association after I experienced two lung collapses… In 2011 my now wife and I rode our bicycles from California to our wedding in Colorado. The feeling of the open road and experiencing life at a slower speed than a car while arriving at your destination under human power is truly epic. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.junipermesacreations.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juniper_mesa_creations
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Junipermesa

Image Credits
Janay Camp