About
“Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. […] Only within that interdependency of strengths, acknowledged and equal, can power seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.”
- Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
Melanie Cowman is a transdisciplinary artist and (self-proclaimed) researcher originally from Boise, Idaho. She finds joy in exploring her sense of self, listening deeply, learning, art-making, and connecting with others through conversation.
Melanie’s work encompasses a range of indeterminately connected ideas and practices. In investigating the connections between these ideas and practices with an open attitude and a critical eye, she strives to arrive at an understanding of the world which is closer to the truth. She believes we convene on the truth by allowing multiple perspectives to exist simultaneously, embracing the uncertain overlap of those perspectives as a pathway to critical understanding. Her work is predicated on the belief that there are ideas which are beyond our capacity to understand within the confines of linear language, and that art is a language which can get us to ideas that the standard communication cannot.
Her work is about thinking and feeling — and also about feeling and thinking about thinking and feeling. The layering is intentional.
She works across many mediums, including music, performance, image-making, sculpture, photography, and writing. Melanie often creates space for the cross-pollination of these forms, driven by her desire to build entirely new artistic mediums. Much of her art is social in nature, created with an audience in mind and rooted in her commitment to expressing emotion with clarity and intention.
Our intrinsic connection to nature remains an important influence, even as her aesthetic focus shifts with time. Other themes she explores include ethereality, sapphic love, diagrams, surrealism, and language.
Most recently, Melanie has been exploring experimental nonfiction through slideshow lectures, hybrid essays, and documentary forms, expanding the scope of her creative inquiry.
Melanie has shown her work at:
Riso Corp Gallery, Downtown Los Angeles, California
Realms Arcade in Boise, Idaho
California Institute of The Arts
Melanie will be entering her third year in the BFA Fine Arts program at California Institute of The Arts this Fall.