Bad Talents

Bad Talents is the creative identity of mixed-media artist, Shelby Alexander, and the pseudonym under which she exhibits her fine art nationally. Shelby lives and works in Los Angeles. Shelby graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2014 with a degree in Visual Art, and she also studied fashion design at Pratt Institute in NYC. Her work has been exhibited nationally in galleries, museums, and on three billboards. Most recently, her work was on a billboard in Los Angeles in February 2023.

Bad Talents expands contemporary concepts of drawing & painting by uniquely combining figurative works on paper with textile backgrounds. These backgrounds are exclusively composed of repurposed vintage textiles and damaged secondhand clothing, much of which she sources from her own closet. This process serves to explore her own complicated relationship with fashion: after having studied fashion at Pratt, she remains seduced by it as an art form in its own right and as a vehicle for self-expression. Nevertheless, next to Big Oil, the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world. Her work references the pollution of the fashion industry, while highlighting the tension between the modern experience of beauty, consumption, and industrialization—and the long-term environmental impact of the clothing we wear.