Campbell - "Drawing of the Human Condition #2, #4, #5" Three figure drawings in ink an conte crayon

Shirley Aley Campbell • american (1925-2018)

Drawing of the Human Condition #2, #4, #5 C: 1980 • Ink / Conte Crayon on Paper 10-1/2” x 12-3/4”

Shirley Aley Campbell’s world was always just a few degrees off the straight and narrow. When you are only nine years old and your father leaves the family for another woman, you can grow up bitter or with a deeper understanding of human frailties. Shirley Aley Campbell embraced the human condition, just as she found it.

With a broken family, she went through childhood on the “All-Chip-In-Family-Plan”. Two uncles, both Methodist ministers, provided the spiritual compass. Another aunt nurtured a curious mind with weekly trips through the magical -- and free -- Cleveland Art Museum. Soon she was in the Talented Children’s art class, taught by the man who changed her life.

If you are a teacher doubting the impact you can have on children’s lives, listen to 91-year old Shirley Aley Campbell recall Milton J. Fox. “I remember him asking me ‘ What did you see today?’ ‘Snow everywhere,’ I said. ‘Paint it’ he said, and so I did.” The rest of her life she looked closely, painted passionately and learned to love life and the human condition in all its complexity.

By the time she graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art, married her college sweetheart, spent 3 years in New York City, and returned to Cleveland, Shirley Aley Campbell had become an inveterate people-watcher with a special affinity for fringe characters. Where other people visited the Roxy Burlesque Theatre to laugh and ogle, Shirley saw the performers’ suffering and captured it on canvas.

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Soon she was leading a troupe of interesting friends across Short Vincent into a world of Guys and Dolls. There was a Catholic priest who removed his vestments to mingle with lost souls and Helen Cullanen, Cleveland’s society doyenne. So began a lifetime of painting colorful underdogs. Prostitutes and gamblers. Worn-out workers and wiseguys. Hells Angels and motorcycle racers. Lots of motorcycle racers.

Shirley’s Hell’s Angel paintings caught the eye of Cleveland car dealer and art collector, Joe Erdelac, who squired Shirley and her young daughter, through Europe to capture the excitement of motorcycle racing

Shirley Aley Campbell loves everything about life, finding beauty in unappreciated corners of society. It has been a life well lived, to the accompaniment of a deep, baritone saxophone laugh. And, now in her ninth decade, she is like a salmon swimming upstream. The finish is less important than the magnificent effort.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • In Memory of Jim Matin from his many friends 2011.11, 12, 13

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“She always admired humanity just the way she found it. And she went to some interesting places to find it. You don’t paint hookers in yuppie bars.”

2.
“She once said that composition was the key to her art. It appears that interesting, underdog characters were the key to her heart.”

3.
“After seeing her paintings of Hell’s Angels, a Cleveland art collector sent her on a trip to Europe to paint motorcycle racers who looked nothing at all like Hell’s Angels.”

4.
“She once won First Prize three years in a row at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s prestigious May Show. If Reggie Jackson was Mr. October, she was Ms. May.”

Campbell Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1925

Born Shirley Aley in East Cleveland. Her father was an artist who worked for the Cleveland School Board, although she recalled that “he wasn’t very good.” The family was second generation American with her grandparents coming from Turkey and Germany. She recalled starting to paint at age 2 and never stopping.

1934

Her father left the family for another woman. Shirley was raised by her mother, aunts and uncles. Her aunt took her on regular visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art where she eventually took art lessons as part of a small Talented Children class taught by Milton J. Fox. Fox eventually became a well-known Hollywood screenwriter and had a profound effect on Shirley’s life.

1947

Graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art where she initially scrubbed floors for a partial scholarship, but eventually won the prestigious Agnes Gund Scholarship. There she met Joe Campbell who was attending art school after returning from war. After her graduation they married and moved to New York City where she attended classes at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute.

1950

Both Shirley and Joe studied privately with Emy Zweybruck in Estes Park, Colorado. Afterward, the young couple returned to Cleveland where Joe started a career at Lezius-Hilles, a well-known book printer. They remained married for 40 years until Joe died from cancer. Together they raised two daughters.

1957

Won First Prize at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s prestigious May Show. She ended up winning this prize three straight years.

1965-67

Painted her “Burlesque Series” a group of paintings of performers at the Roxy Theatre on Cleveland’s famed Short Vincent Ave. stretching between 7th and 9th Streets.

1970s

Traveled to Los Angeles and San Francisco where she rode along with vice detectives while sketching the unsavory people they came into contact with. The resulting paintings of prostitutes, Hell’s Angels and assorted characters became collectively known as her “Derelict Series.” This led to a European tour painting motorcycle racers, sponsored by Cleveland car dealer and art collector, Joe Erdelac.

1977

One of three artists profiled in the catalog of the 1977 May Show Retrospective.

1986

Won the prestigious Cleveland Arts Prize.

1987

Husband, Bob, died after a battle with cancer. He was also an artist, who decided Shirley was more talented, so built a career at a Cleveland book printer to support the family. She always insisted that he was “pretty good, himself.”

2004

The nude portraits that made up a big part of her later work, were shown in a one-woman show “By Ones and Twos: Portraits in a New Age” at the Dead Horse Gallery in Lakewood, Ohio.

2010

Moved to a retirement home west of Cleveland where she spent the last 8 years of her life painting residents and capturing their humanity. Some things never change.

2011

A three part retrospective of her work was staged by ArtNEO at three different locations scattered around Cleveland, Ohio.

2015

Her work, along with work by four other Cleveland women, was included in a show titled “Majority Rising: Cleveland’s Female Gaze” at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve.

2018

She died after a long life as a professional artist. During her career she had over 50 one-woman shows and as many group shows. Her work became part of the Permanent Collections of nine museums, including the Canton Museum of Art. Her works are also found in a number of well-known corporate and private collections.