When I was young, I remember my mother and I would walk through the department store to a small room in the back where purchases were wrapped. There, on the wall were different combinations of paper and bows mounted on boards the size of shirt boxes. These tasteful combinations represented important events -- birthdays, weddings, holidays, and graduations. As my mother chose her wrapping, I had mixed feelings seeing life’s events reduced to a particular paper and accompanying bow. Yet there was something comforting too -- the hope of a wrapped gift, the coding of an event using color and ribbon, the simplicity of the display, even the melancholy inherent in a pre-determined choice.
Like my memory of choosing gift-wrap, my work similarly celebrates life’s moments but more specifically, the recollection of those moments that often go unheralded.
This drive to simplify and encode my life’s events, memories and thoughts extends to my text-based work. These pieces appear simple, accessible, and seemingly familiar yet their content and context allow for multiple interpretations.
Philadelphia artist Buy Shaver primarily works site-specifically joining his work to its ideal location or creating work for a specific venue. He creates abstract compositions and text-based work that appear simple, direct and seemingly familiar yet the content and context allow for multiple interpretations. It is this combination that allows his work to be at once straightforward and uncomplicated yet oddly illusive.
He is the author of Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design—A Visual Primer and an Associate Professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Contributing Author to Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design, Bloomsbury Press-Bloomsbury Publishing pic., London, UK. Published November, 2015.
Author of Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design, A Visual Primer, published 2010 by Intellect Books, New York and London. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
1986 - 1988
MFA, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Awarded Teaching Assistantship, 1987 - 1988
1981 - 1984
BFA (Illustration), Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
2010
Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
2003
New American Painting, Open Studio Press, Edition 45
Juror: Ingrid Schaffner
2023
Advising Suite Installation, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA
Included four works: End of the Road, My Love First, Day/Night and 4-Color Stack, wall paintings ink and latex on canvas.
December 2022 - January 2023
Matisse in the 1930’s: The Mural Project, Collaborative project with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mural Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Work inspired by Matisse exhibition; designed and produced for public installation
Conversations with Matthew Affron documented in a series of 6 videos.
2022
Organized and Design of Artists’ book entitled This Time.
Collaboration with Thomas Vance and Lauren Whearty.
Self-published through Lulu Press, Spring - Summer 2022
February 2021
Stay Positive, Poster Design, InLiquid Benefit, Philadelphia, PA
February 2020
PreMarker-Miami, Work on Paper, InLiquid Benefit Exhibition, Philadelphia, PA
November 2019 - January 2020
Modular Riot, Group Exhibition, James Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Artist’s Talk January 16, 2020
August 2019
Let’s Get to Work, Philadelphia Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, Philadelphia, PA
Commission for 10 works on paper
April - May 2019
Private School, a group exhibition of art and crafts at 448 N 10th Street, Philadelphia, PA
Others Wait installation
December 2018 - January 2019
Commission, Graffiti Lofts, Philadelphia, PA
9 works painted in the interior corridors of the apartment complex, including Antibes (dazzle), Colored Cross, and Diamonds Pressed into Clear Skies, among others.
May - August 2018
Light and Language, a group show, Park Towne Place, Philadelphia, PA
Body of work displayed in multiple sites throughout the 4-tower apartment complex.
Artists’ Talk, May 16, 2018
Matter: Works by Michael Grothusen and Buy Shaver, Hick’s Art Gallery, Buck’s County Community College, Newtown, PA
Curated by Richard Torchia. October-December 2018.
Matter, Artist’s talk and curator’s conversation and video interview, Nov 7, 2018.
June 2017
Bugs of Paradise, Group Exhibition, Crane Arts Building/Grey Space, Philadelphia, PA
September 2017
Touraine Neon Party, Touraine Apartments (Penthouse Suite), Philadelphia, PA
Design submission and mural installation for collaborative exhibition with Len Davidson
December 2015 - August 2016
Group Exhibition, Democratic National Convention Headquarters, Washington D.C.
Group Exhibition, Sundance TV Headquarters, New York, NY
May 20, 2016
The CHAIRity Project, Dane Decor, Philadelphia, PA
Charity event for InLiquid Art and Design
Art in City Hall (Vote)-in celebration of the Democratic National Convention and InLiquid
2015
POST at Park Towne Place, Installation in Apartment 1604, Philadelphia, PA
Part of Design Philadelphia 2015
Artworks at ADL. A juried group invitational exhibition at Engagement Studios to benefit the Philadelphia Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.
2014 - 2015
SkyFrame, InLiquid at 2 Commerce Square, Philadelphia, PA
