March/April Print Issue, Vol. 44, No. 2
Object Lessons: Melissa Stern
I begin with the germ of an idea—a color, an object, a gesture. From that small beginning, a piece develops. I often make process drawings of a sculpture, but I never know what or who it’s going to be. I like this serendipity.
A NEW SHOE began with a found piece of wood. I saw it as a torso and legs, both evocative and distinctly "female." The creative tension between this mature femaleness and the childish shoes became the heart of the piece. To me, everything an artist makes is autobiographical. I have deep memories of wearing the same little-girl Mary Janes as my sculptures do—they appear throughout my work. I’m interested in memory and snippets of childhood experience that we carry with us throughout our lives. There are always tidbits of memory in my work, but no piece is directly autobiographical. I’m interested in art that embodies this push and pull, both visual and emotional.
My drawings and sculptures are dance partners. The themes in one echo the other. It’s important for me to make and exhibit them together. I think of the drawings as two-dimensional sculptures and the sculptures as three-dimensional drawings. Both are layered and dimensional in their surfaces, and I use the same range of materials—clay, resin, wood, metal, plastic, found objects from thrift stores, tag sales, and dumpsters—in both bodies of work; the universe seems to send them to me.
