Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Mellon.
Sam, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Well, I started my career at LACMA (The Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 1995 after graduating from California State University, San Bernardino with a Fine Arts degree.
My time at LACMA was like going to graduate school. I flirted with the idea of going back to school for an MFA before I realized I really had a love for presentation and my own personal creativity was leaning away from making visual art and moving more towards songwriting and music. So I felt that having that musical outlet for my creativity and building exhibitions as a better line of “work,” and I always found those to be two very necessary elements for me.
I never really wanted to combine my creativity with a need to pay the rent. So I really dove deep into the exhibitions world. My time at LACMA was most notably shaped by my friendship and mentorship of the late Bernard Kester who was LACMA’s exhibition designer in the throughout the 90s when I was there. Bernard really helped me train my eye and recognize the importance of subtly and nuance in presenting 2-D and 3-D work. Bernard was a master of color. His voice still lives in my head daily.
I took a position at Curatorial Assistance in 2002. They were a firm in Pasadena that did Art Services, and I took on the role of Director of that business. It was a real sharp learning curve for me having had zero business background. It was a real crash course in letting go of ideals and getting serious about time and materials. I was there for 14 years, and I am really proud of the things we accomplished in that time. By the time I completed my work there I felt I really had become a solid Project Manager.
However, I was starting to get more interested in Exhibition Design. I designed some small things, but my first stab at a full-fledged exhibition was when I was tasked with designing an exhibition about Hello Kitty for the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. It was an unlikely first exhibit to design, but it taught me a lot, and I was very proud of the result.
The exhibit then traveled to Seattle to the EMP Museum, where I designed it for a second time for that space. After that, I was hooked and saw the lane I wanted to take for the next phase of my career. Meanwhile, since about 2009 I was beginning to “moonlight” as a curator. I partnered up with Claudia Bohn-Spector to co-curate “Speaking in Tongues” which was an exhibition that paired Robert Heinecken and Wallace Berman.
The exhibition was a part of the initial round of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time exhibits. In addition to curating the show, I also designed the exhibit (with Bohn-Spector). The exhibit and its catalog which I wrote for was a great success. I really felt that my career was naturally pulling me in a new direction where I was designing, curating and project managing exhibits. So in 2016, I decided to break out on my own.
Bohn-Spector and I formalized our partnership after curating several more exhibitions together, and in 2016 we formed MICRONAUT, which became a home for our continuing projects. Simultaneously I began my own business as a consultant doing a variety of art-related services including exhibition design, project management, and art and exhibit installation.
Has it been a smooth road?
I have to say I’ve been pretty lucky. There hasn’t been a lot of struggles, per se. As my business has grown over the past three years, time has really been the hardest challenge. Finding the time to fit everything in. Somehow, so far I have been able to do it, but time is a constant challenge for me.
I require a fair amount of “non-work” time where I can go to a ball game or rehearse music with my band, The Skylarks, or spend time with my wife. So trying to keep that time carved out and meet all of the demands of my work projects is a constant balancing act. I really have to work hard to not tip into becoming a workaholic.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Well, in terms of my partnership with Bohn-Spector, we describe MICRONAUT as a unique firm founded on a passionate interest in artistic expression, museum display, and scholarly interpretation. We envision, research, design, and realize museum-quality art exhibitions from start to finish.
We specialize in identifying compelling artists and exhibitions and the right institutions to pair them with. We build ideas from the ground up. My business partner Claudia Bohn-Spector is really the brains behind the operation when it comes to academic and scholarly thinking about an exhibition and the vision for it. Her ability to contextualize an artist or a subject is really quite keen. I collaborate with her to figure out how we can tease out those compelling ideas in an exhibit form. We collaborate on the design, and then I figure out how to make it happen by working with colleagues and fabricators that help me get us to finish line.
I think what sets MICRONAUT apart from other designers and curators is that between the two of us we are able to be a full-service shop when it comes to exhibit creation. We have the curatorial chops, the design ability, and project management skills that really enable an institution to sit back and let us realize an exhibition for them. I don’t know of any other firm that does exhibits exactly the way we do, and we like to think it’s a nice niche we’ve carved out for ourselves. I would say that many of these characteristics also would apply to my own business as a designer, project manager, and installer.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think LA is probably one of only a handful of the cities in the U.S. where you could do what we are able to do here. The amount of opportunities in the arts sometimes seem endless, and just when you think things are drying up, along comes a whole new slew of opportunities.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.micronautart.com
- Phone: 626 872 4016
- Email: [email protected]
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