Phil Shafer’s distinctive work has become much more visible in Kansas City in recent years, thanks to a number of prominent public art commissions that began with a multi-year mural for the Middle of the Map Festival in the Westport entertainment district. His signature Angry Zebra mural, a project of Downtown KC’s Art in the Loop, rises fifty feet tall on the side of the Bonfils building. More recently the Kansas City Royals hired him to paint walls in player areas at Kauffman Stadium, and his work spread across two of the Missouri Bank “artboards” in the Crossroads Arts District.
Shafer lived his earliest years in Brooklyn, New York, which he describes as growing up surrounded by hustle and bustle, graffiti, hip hop music and an urban mindset. After moving to Kansas City as a youth, he went on to graduate from the Kansas City Art Institute. As a student at KCAI, he adopted the moniker “Sike Style” and created street art using biodegradable wheat paste stickers. He continues to operate as Sike Style Industries, making art and merchandise, curating exhibitions, and spinning records, in addition to working as a graphic designer at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Shafer’s work for the Kansas City Collection suggests opposite sides of the same coin. Agreed and Recycled Blue communicate primarily through symbols while Dual March contains more narrative, both enlivened by the same emphasis on movement.
In Agreed, slanting bold yellow, orange and pink arrows convey energetic activity. City architecture comes to mind via olive-hued geometric horizontals and a brick-like background. Two hands of different shades shake in agreement while a hand in the middle of the work snaps its fingers in a gesture of recognition. Below it a blue finger tied with string suggests remembrance. Taken as a whole, the work encourages mindfulness in our interactions with others.
Recycled Blue features dynamic diagonal lines over layers of abstract and organic patterns including personal symbols such as zebra stripes. The zebra stripes recalls Shafer’s Angry Zebra mural and relates to his bi-racial identity. He refers to the Angry Zebra as “the spirit animal of bi-racial youth, navigating between different communities, never really fitting in completely but sharing a unique perspective.”
Dual March evokes the Civil Rights Era, as dark-skinned protestors hold signs and an American flag, surrounded by light-skinned observers, soldiers and perhaps elected officials and federal agents. Shafer borrowed the images of the flag and the young woman clutching a book to her chest from photographs documenting the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He created Dual March for an exhibition at Washburn University’s Mulvane Art Museum commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision that led to integration of public schools.
As in Agreed and Recycled Blue, the great strength that Shafer displays in Dual March lies in his use of graphic punch and urban sensibility to appeal to a wide variety of viewers.
– James Martin