Shira Service was born in South Florida in 1991. She studied fine arts at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan, where she earned her BFA in 2014, a full-tuition scholarship, and the Robert Breer Film Award for Excellence in Film & Video. While in New York, Service also documented school- and city-wide protests, worked as a camera operator and live-event multi-cam switcher, worked at a small kosher bakery, and was a swim instructor.
In 2015 and 2016, Service directed and curated the MUX: Asheville Video Art Festival which took place in Asheville, NC and at which over 20 local and international artists exhibited video art. For one year following, Service lived in Beijing, China where she curriculum developed and taught middle and high school visual and dramatic arts. Following her time in China, Service relocated to Los Angeles where she collaborated with her brother on the development of a distributed computing network and digital Republic called Pietra. She worked on both the conceptualization and design of an AI based, distributed platform called the Artist Network, which would exist on the Pietra Network. While in California, Service collaborated with creatives across multiple mediums, worked as Director of Operations for an alternative gallery and studio space, and rode her bicycle through smoggy air (less smoggy than Beijing, at least).
In 2020, Service relocated to Dallas and began working as a graduate student researcher in clinical psychology. She continued such research for the next four years. Service earned her Post-baccalaureate Certificate in Clinical Psychology from Fielding Graduate University in 2021. She presented research at three annual APA (American Psychological Association) conventions, worked for a non-for-profit psychosocial rehabilitation center for four years, and was a designer and contributor to The Tablet, the seasonal newsletter of the APA’s Division 55: Society for Prescribing Psychology. She earned a PsyToolkit Programmer Certificate indicating proficiency to code and run game like neuropsychological tasks for measuring neuropsychological factors, such as working memory.
Service has also worked as an artist’s assistant, studio manager, and editor across New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. She worked as a gallerist for Galerie Ron Mandos (of Amsterdam) for multiple iterations of the UNTITLED Art Fair in Miami Beach. She has worked in indie podcasting (in both the US and China), in music video production and post-production, in graphic design, video editing, motion graphics, and sound design over the years and across multiple industries.
In 2024, Service returned to teaching art, primarily at the high school level, in downtown Dallas, Texas. In this role, Service teaches both traditional and new media art processes, techniques, and histories and provides opportunities for students to gain exposure to local contemporary art. Regarding her own creative production, she is currently working on the telling of a few stories – and to do so, she is developing art primarily in the form of video essay.