Joyce Melander-Dayton "Extravagant Constructions"
June Kelly Gallery
This event has ended.
Extravagant Constructions, an exhibition of abstract modular compositions by Joyce Melander-Dayton, lively and colorful environments created with beads, yarn and other similar materials on components of varying shapes and sizes, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, on Friday, February 25. The exhibition will remain on view through March 29.
Melander-Dayton has moved completely away from her earlier realistic portrayal of everyday objects like brier pipes, ceramic bowls and old shoes. In her new work, she continues her exploration of abstract composition with unusual materials in unusual combinations – small, ornate glass beads in place of paint, yarn as a medium to capture line and embroideries and other fabrics to provide texture and add visual density to her multi-shaped surfaces.
She has also left stretched canvas behind and has created small circular or triangular components that become individual pieces of larger installations, in a way reminiscent of island chains, like the Philippines or the Ryukyus south of Japan, both places where she lived when she was young.
Her unorthodox use of materials and their combinations, and her improvisation and control continue a trend among contemporary visual artists to broaden the definition of the medium.
Art writer Jill Conner, in an essay in the exhibition catalogue, comments that in Melander-Dayton’s new work “The depth of each component varies from the next and balances the painterly with the sculptural in such a way that these colorfully vibrant artworks become a series of separate installations that suggest a levitating, drifting atmosphere indicative of a floating world.”
Conner adds that Melander-Dayton “captures the space between the material and the ethereal while reflecting a visual balance that flows as evenly as paint itself.”
Conner also notes that the artist, a pianist, finds creative inspiration in classical music, particularly complex compositional pieces like fugues and symphonies that interlace different musical motifs and themes together.
“The piano is immediate and stimulating,” Melander-Dayton tells Conner. “The piano is definitely evident in my compositions.”
The artist says her constructions are “as complicated as the fugues.” But Conner concludes that “everything rhymes, syncs and visually harmonizes.”
Melander-Dayton lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A native of Warrenton, Virginia, she attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and received a bachelor's degree in 1982 from the University of Minnesota.
Media
Schedule
from February 25, 2011 to March 29, 2011