Melissa: Some of my stuffs up here I'm going for a real physical cross between painting and sculpture, you know what I mean? Last year it was really hard because I was trying to follow the assignments and at the same time do what I wanted to do. This was my final project and now it’s a segway into thesis this year.
(For a visual of these “boxes” and the newest of Melissa’s works, please see the youtube video of our interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0vSYaC-_6I)
And so--its just repetitive boxes… I drew inspiration from the stuff at Dia Beacon, I don’t
know if you’ve ever been there, but they have stuff from Robert Smithson and other artists, and I always forget, who does those ellipses that you walk in?
(Richard Serra)
So then I became really interested in a person’s interaction with artwork, not just in “I'm looking at it” but in an “Ok this is in my space right now, not just against the wall" and how that changes looking at it. I’m going to start building nontraditional canvases that really interfere with your space. I'm planning on being really controversial and having it be the conflict of ‘No that not a painting, that’s a sculpture’-- but it is! I'm dealing with the same materials more or less, its still wood, its still canvas, I still have to consider color and composition, its just that it starts at an earlier phase with building as opposed to just a regular canvas. I took sculpture all last semester and it had a profound influence on me because I started to learn how much I like to build stuff. The painting that started it all is a big painting.
(See the picture “Torn Canvas”)
I got really bored last year, so I took strips of canvas, and I didn’t pay attention to whether they fit the stretchers or anything and I stretched three strips and left an empty space. I kid you not, the canvas sat like that for five months. But I would watch people walk through that space and I really didn’t want to paint anything on it. I was trying to figure out how to address what I had done, so then eventually what I decided to do was to roughly stretch another piece of canvas behind it and then paint there, so then I was paying attention to the part that I liked best, does that make sense?
Stephanie: Yeah definitely. I think its really interesting that you were talking about expanding your work to be even more like these (Box sculpture/paintings on the wall), especially because of the artists you’ve been getting inspiration from and the experience of people interacting with that first unconventional canvas.
Melissa: Its kind of crazy, but I like going back and remembering how it happened. And another person I loved all last year was Robert Ryman. He did the white paintings, I mean who even thinks of that! You go to the exhibition—and again this is at Dia Beacon—and there’s just a whole bunch of different white paintings, but they're all unique. So I started looking at minimalism and now I see my work as a kind of combination of constructivism--the building aspect-- and minimalism--the abstract color fields. That’s pretty much it.
Stephanie: Cool, very cool, I like it. I want to make sure we show this one, because this is a work in progress right?
Melissa: Yeah that’s going to go up on the wall
Stephanie: So it’s going to have a dip in it? The canvas is?
Melissa: This (the small end) is going to be against the wall, and then the canvas is going to go around the outside and then the center is going to remain empty. So it’s framing the wall more or less, the object, the shape itself, is going to be the painting.
Stephanie: I see what you’re saying, these are very interesting.
Melissa: We’ll see how it comes out, this is my first prototype, but I'm excited to see it when its finished. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Stephanie: Please do, so then in terms of thesis, this the first step of that?
Melissa: Yeah it’s my first chance to go all out with out caring about what the assignment is, that’s exciting stuff.
A Sampling of Melissa's Work:
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| "Torn Canvas" |
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| (One of Melissa's wood sculptures) |
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