Ilaamen Pelshaw says the only thing she needs is “a place to have [her] mess.” 

In a spare bedroom-turned-studio in her Ralston home, she does it all. Illustration, graphic design, contemporary art, and commissions of pets (chihuahuas, pugs, and bulldogs are her favorite because of their funky features). 

Pelshaw grew up in Guatemala and chose to study graphic design at the Universidad Rafael Landivar, because it was either that or architecture, as those were the main artistic options. “Graphic design is closer to art,” she said. Following the professional track to a marketing firm and then years of freelance, her career took her around the world. Travel became a core characteristic of her identity. 

“I have strong ties to Italy,” Pelshaw said. “I thought I would end up living there. Italian and Spanish are very similar and I started picking up the language quickly. I studied a prestigious summer course in Milano over fashion and color theory. And all the money I was making—it was all for me.”

It was all for her. Yet somehow, she ended up in Omaha. That somehow, of course, being the one thing that can get a person to take their eyes off Italy for the Great Plains: love. 

“I have been in Omaha since 2015 when I moved here with my husband [Robert],” she said. “This is my home, and I just love it. It’s so beautiful, and people are kind. I lived all my life in Guatemala, and I try to go at least once a year to visit family. I’m so happy to see my people and my friends, but I feel like a visitor now. I don’t know how to explain it. Omaha is my home.”

And her new home has done wonders to challenge her creativity. In Guatemala, she said, her strength was her versatility. Her greatest magic trick was that a client could come to her, tell her what they wanted, and she could execute it perfectly. 

“In the states, what the galleries and curators want is a strong, consistent style,” Pelshaw said. “One day I want to work in one style, and the next day is something different. The best I could do is narrow it down to three main styles: geometric, expressionist, and illustrative cartoons. Sometimes I feel the temptation to change completely. I’ll visit an exhibition and suddenly I want to build a sculpture or be a photographer.” 

While her constant itch to make something new might sound like a downfall, it’s Pelshaw’s secret sauce. 

“Going to museums, going to exhibitions, that wires me,” she said. “Even just going to a jazz concert, just seeing the beauty of art, it gets me tingly. I need to make something.” 

A friend and colleague in the Omaha art scene, Erin Isenhart, loves the energy that Pelshaw brings to her work.

“The movement, bright and uplifting colors, and hints of culture are what draw me to her work,” Isenhart said. “These pieces pull me in as if they want to tell me more… more about what they represent, what they want me to feel, what they have to offer. Her pieces make me feel like I should flamenco dance my way through life wearing a red dress and high heels, smiling and laughing along the way.”

Pelshaw’s three main styles have kept her on her toes. A geometric series depicting coffee as fashion accessories (think big mugs of black coffee as sunglasses) is a recent highlight, along with a collection of fancy, characterized animals, and expressionist pieces with big, bright brush strokes. 

Her chosen media are a mix of acrylic paint, digital drawing, and vector illustration. 

“The beauty of art is that you can express whatever you have inside,” Pelshaw said. “My art is in enhanced beauty. There’s a lot of horrible things around, but if you have a beautiful painting in your home, and you can look at it and sip your coffee, that’s what I want to do. If you can feel better, if your day can start better, just with the little beauties in every day…life is worth living.” 

Pelshaw’s next big idea is a series depicting Black and brown beauty through fashion portraits, a series she’s thinking about calling Shades of Beauty.

“It’s very common in our world that when you see a beautiful face, it’s a beautiful European face,” she said. “And sometimes we can’t relate to other things or other people because we don’t see them often, but we need to be creating all the beauties.” 

When she tells people she’s from Guatemala, Pelshaw said people often imagine her living in the mountains in a shack because “that’s what is portrayed in documentaries.” Her goal is to depict Black and Latinx and Indigenous women in the prosperous, vivid way in which they truly exist. 

Pelshaw’s career is a prime example of that different, audacious, personal essence she strives to capture. While she has trouble narrowing to a consistent style, it’s clear her work has one common theme: bravery. 

“I love traditional art, but it doesn’t inspire me as much as contemporary pieces,” she said. “A lot of artists have the skill to do hyperrealism, but they decide to go in a different direction. 

“It reminds me of this documentary I watched on Picasso. He was like this super painter, but he saw Matisse come in and make all these different things, and [Picasso] realized it took him his whole life to make something new and crazy. It’s just so brave to make something people have never seen before.”

That’s where the world will find Pelshaw: sipping her coffee, standing in awe of the newness in every stroke. 

Editor's note: After publication of this story, Pelshaw confirmed she will have an exhibit at Sozo Coffee Shop during the months of November/December 2020. She has also started working on her Shades of Beauty series, and the first piece was created for the History Nebraska and Nebraska Arts Council Historic Poster project, which you can view here. 

Visit ilaamen.com for more information.

This article first appeared in the November/December 2020 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.