Teen artist takes home Best of Show

By Amy Maginnis-Honey | DAILY REPUBLIC | June 01, 2010 15:25

VACAVILLE - Frank Shiner is becoming a regular exhibitor at the Vacaville Art Gallery & League.

The 15-year-old Vanden High School sophomore won first place in the student art show that ended in April.

A few weeks later, he was back for the 33rd annual juried art show and won the Best of Show for his painting 'Bleedball: The Destruction of Childhood.' The show runs through June 19.

The title sums up the work, painted in acrylic.

It's set in a dark urban area and features a predominant bleeding baseball on the left side of the picture and a balloon floating away in the background.

'Children in this world don't get to be kids,' Shiner said of his idea for the painting. The well-worn baseball, he noted, represents child play; the balloon, heartbreak.

He didn't expect it to win top honors, especially because he was competing with adults he felt had more experience painting.

At the show's reception, Shiner said he got a lot of positive feedback and noted his 'subject contrasts a lot of paintings in the gallery.'

Shiner, after watching Bob Ross paint on TV, approached his dad, Jack Shiner, and asked for help painting. Jack Shiner, just as his own father had done, got out the paints and showed his son a few basics.

Frank Shiner's first piece: A Bob Ross-style landscape. From there he's moved into a new world with a self-portrait done in black, red and white and another picture of himself wearing a gas mask.

He was commissioned to do a piece based on Edgar Allan Poe's 'Annabelle Lee.' It features a girl in a white dress on a cliff donning a gas mask. Her hair and dress morph into a second painting.

'Frank works on his own,' Jack Shiner said.

The two of them take classes together from artist Randy Tribo, who is first vice president of the Vacaville Art League & Gallery. Tribo said that for many years the juried art show was only open to those 18 and older. Recently, the gallery opened up membership to those 14 and older. Including that age range in the juried art show was the next step.

Though Tribo wasn't there when the show was judged, he has been told the three jurists were captivated with Frank Shiner's work and were 'semi aghast' when they learned he was only 15.

'He's been pumping out some incredible stuff,' Tribo said.

The two met when Shiner was still in junior high and entered the gallery's student art show, which Tribo had taken charge of.

'He was the only junior high student with a painting,' Tribo said. 'He got first place.'

Not only is Frank Shiner a talented artist, Tribo said, he's a great student, virtuoso piano player and active in Boy Scouts.

'He's very well rounded for 15,' Tribo said.

But it's a career in engineering, be it architectural, mechanical or robotics, Frank Shiner desires.

Another goal is to get his work into a modern art museum.

'He's got all this energy and great insight,' Tribo said, adding that 'Bleedball' was probably repainted three times. 'It started out with an eyeball and optic nerve then evolved into the baseball. He has no qualms painting over something he's worked on for 10 years to get it the way he likes it.'

Frank Shiner said he appreciates his parents' encouragement for his endeavors and said he wanted to thank his mother, Tess Shiner, 'for not getting mad when I spilled paint on the garage floor.'

'He's always in the garage (painting),' she said. 'Sometimes I have to remind him it's time to do his homework.'

The gallery is at 718 E. Monte Vista Ave. Admission is free.

Reach Amy Maginnis-Honey at 427-6957 or amaginnis@dailyrepublic.net.


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