Dancer Juliette Shen, changing clothes at Shea's direction, added and subtracted layers, mixing new colors live in the transparent silk.

This research led to several hollow-figure compositions from the 1980s designed to be sited in public spaces, such as Eden 1986 (John Hancock Tower, Chicago), Shepherd’s Muse 1988 (Oliver Ranch), Shield 1990 (Sheldon Museum of Art), Without Words 1988 (Walker Art Center), and "Post-Balzac" 1990 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden).

[10] An artist-in-residence in Kutztown, Pennsylvania in 1987,[11] Shea was then engaged for a 1989 residency at Chesterwood—Daniel Chester French’s summer studio in Stockbridge, Mass., where he had worked on his Lincoln Memorial monument.

It was sited at Doris Freedman Plaza at 60th St. and Central Park, directly north of the Civil War era Union Victory Monument of Augustus Saint-Gaudens - a gilded equestrian figure of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

[12] Following several fellowships abroad, including a Rockefeller Foundation Residency Bellagio, Italy, The Rome Prize Fellowship the American Academy in Rome, and the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Artist’s Award Residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, Shea began a group of works in 2000 that deal with the figure imagined as character and icon.

In this very personal response, Shea fashioned a group of mannequin-like figures, as if placed in the windows of the Brooks Brothers store just across from the site on that Tuesday.

About them Shea has written, "I was struck by this unique juxtaposition, the sleek image of Success - American Style, opposite this spectacular attempt to topple it, with just the unbroken shop window between themz'.

Shea made additional sculptural portraits for the show of three of her favorite figurative sculptors - "Louise Monument" (Bourgeois), "Elizabeth Tribute" (Catlett) and "Marisol".