Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Meier.
Hi Melissa, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I can’t remember a time when art wasn’t an important part of my life. After high school, I was accepted to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and couldn’t have been happier to be surrounded by fellow artists. I was most interested in fine art, but my parents wanted to make sure I could find a paying job when I graduated! So, with a degree in illustration, I spent many years working as an illustrator and designer in New York City. I freelanced for MTV, VH1, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Fortune, Discovery, and various others. To stay true to what I felt was my “calling”, I continued to do fine art on the side and was lucky enough to show in several NYC galleries during this time. In 1997 I married my husband and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was at this point that I was able to focus one hundred percent on my fine art.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Being an artist is never easy, but it is the one thing in my life that I am always happy doing. It has little to do with how much money I can sell my work for… if money was my main driver, I certainly wouldn’t be constructing using organic materials! In my “Skins Series” I use fragile items from nature with limited life spans. Most are literally decomposing as I work with them. The hardest and most frustrating part is just trying to preserve the art as I continuously refresh it. I have a love/hate relationship with the process: I love that the materials are organic and that they will eventually disintegrate when I am done. But I hate the delicate nature of the construction, that the materials are always in a state of flux and disarray. My passion comes from my love of nature and how I want the viewer to experience the magic I see in it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a multidisciplinary artist who combines sculpture, photography, painting, and found objects. I like to describe myself as a visual poet of sorts, as I don’t want any single medium to define me. At the moment I am working on my Skins Series for a solo show in March 2023 at Oceanside Museum of Art in Oceanside, California; it will be curated by Kate Stern. My “skins” inspiration comes from Brazilian Carnival and Native American Skin-Walkers. As a child living in Brazil, I was brought up seeing beautiful parade floats of costumes – many taking more than a year to create. There was something so magical and powerful about watching these events. I was also inspired by legends of indigenous people and how they used skins of animals to transform into them, creating a bridge between the human and animal worlds. I wanted to create my own bridge with organic materials and watch the work come to life on the human body. As my work evolved, I became equally interested in the future of fashion as an extreme form of kinetic sculpture.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
People who follow my art (not close friends) would probably be surprised to hear that my family is a big part of my art – especially for my photoshoots. My daughter is often my go-to model and my husband and son help with the logistics of the staging and setup. Another thing people might not know is that I am half Brazilian and half Swiss. I was brought up in Brazil but spent every holiday visiting grandparent in Switzerland. In 2015, my family and I returned to Switzerland and lived in Zurich for four years. The nature in Switzerland inspired me to continue exploring different organic mediums for the Skins Series.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.melissameierart.com
- Instagram: melissameierart
Image Credits
Melissa Meier
Sofia Macdonald
Nova Jesswein
Asa Amble
