If you’re looking for something unique to give your loved one, friend or family member for Christmas, I’d like to recommend the art of my good friend and downtown resident, Shane Paris. Shane can create custom pieces just for you (I’ll talk more about that in a moment) and his work is surprisingly affordable. Here are a few samples of what he can do:
This is a collage of images from one of Shane’s favorite towns, New Orleans. This is also one of Shane’s specialties: If you provide him with a group of related photographs, he can produce and print an attractive collage incorporating those images. For example, for one client he took 4 years of college photos and created a collage of those as a graduation present.
Pet photos are another specialty of Shane’s. He can take a regular photo of your pet and superimpose it on a background image to produce a dramatic effect. Here a client from another state commissioned Shane to create artwork based on his dog, Scout. He mailed Shane a photo of Scout taken with a regular camera, and Shane scanned it and positioned it over a swamp background image and adjusted the lighting to produce the effect shown above. If you love your pet and would like an artistic image of him/her, Shane is the man to talk to.
One thing Shane does really well is take photos of ordinary objects and turn them into works of art via photo editing. Here is one of his all-time favorites, a picture of a microphone.
Another ordinary object Shane photographed (this time, a door knocker) turned into something special thanks to his artistic skills. Once again, you can commission Shane to do custom work if you have a particular object in mind.
Here’s a Memphis photo Shane took and retouched: The sunset over the Mississippi River and I-40 bridge. Because Shane lives in Downtown Memphis and owns a camera, you can commission him to take custom photos of whatever place or scene you would like. He can also retouch them to produce any desired effect, and have them printed on any size canvas.
Shane does abstract pieces as well. This one is called “Begonia.” He sells prints of it and others like it that he has done.
Shane also designs logos and graphics for websites, and in fact, he is the person I have asked to help design a logo for the Downtown Memphis site I plan on rolling out next spring. Shane lives downtown and loves it (and he loves the South in general, as is reflected in his work) and I can think of no person more qualified to design art for a site that says “Downtown Memphis.”
If you’re on MySpace, you can view more of Shane’s work through his MySpace page. You can also join his MySpace art group.
If you’re interested in purchasing Shane’s art or commissioning him to do a custom job, you can either contact him through his MySpace page, or you can e-mail me (paul@paulryburn.com) and I will send you his contact info.