Yearly Archives: 2016

Shelton attended Santa Barbara High School, then Westmont, and then narrowly avoided going to Vietnam after attending art grad school at the University of Montana at Missoula, where he studied with influential professors such as the poet Richard Hugo. “My interest moved from painting to sculpture there,” said Shelton, who credits an eclectic array of visiting professors such as Robert (“Spiral Jetty”) Smithson, who hung out at Missoula. He went on to grad school, married, and had children but came back to Santa Barbara, where he kept an art studio yet needed a job; he found one in a Goleta welding firm. After he made some money, Shelton gave back to the woodlands that inspired him by helping to physically build the Westmont art department when there was only one art professor, John Carlander. “It makes me feel really good,” he said, “that I did something for an art department up there.” more