That Shape is My Shade, at the Thomas J. Marcia J. Haas Center for Perfromaing Arts, featuring works with Melanie with Castina Bombardo, Randal Domer, Lin Foust, Giles Hefferan, Sean Larson and Anal Shah.
Melanie Daniel is currently the Stuart B. and Barabra Padnos Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Chair for the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Grand Valley State University. For That Shape is My Shade, she has coordinated a collaborative exhibtiion with a group of artists representing faculty, staff and students at the universty.
This exhibition serves as one of Daniel's culminating projects for her residency, and explores each artist's process of creating, sharing and stepping away from their work.
Daniel's statement about her sculptures in the exhibition:
"Plants and hybridized forests appear in my paintings but I’ve never made these specific forms in 3D before. I wanted to make soft sculptures that exist in a sort of transitory space; unlike conventional paintings or sculptures, which have rigid dimensions and carry an ingrained protocol of presentation and care. These are stuffed fabric shapes that take on the orientation and format of a painting and reflect the “in-between” aspect of several work forms. Each sculpture could be unstuffed and ironed out, trading its polyfil and PVC support for stretcher bars. Called to mind are the soft sculptures of Eve Hesse, Philip Guston and Claes Oldenburg.
First, I prepare the canvas, using a wax resist method, fabric dye, acrylic paint. The canvas is then sewn, stuffed and mounted onto found objects that have been gutted, stripped and re-built.
I’m trying to echo the DIY spirit in my painting narrative, where landscapes are filled to the brim with hybrid conifers and tropical palms. Fugitive and versatile plant species in a changing and threatened world."