By Michael Gormley

In March, Melanie Vote opened a solo exhibition at Equity Gallery titled “The Washhouse: Nothing Ever Happened Here”; the installation may be viewed by appointment at the gallery or digitally on both our Equity Showroom and Artsy pages. I was first introduced to Vote and her work while she was completing graduate work at the New York Academy of Art; since then she has exhibited widely with recent solo exhibitions at Galleria Farina in Miami and Hionas Gallery in New York. The current exhibition is ambitious and comprises a site specific installation, plein air works and large-scale studio paintings --all referencing a rural property located in her home-state of Iowa that Vote has returned to over the past ten years to paint and document. Of particular interest to Vote was the discovery of a vintage washhouse on the site--which subsequently proved to be an inspiring motif compelling the creation of the works currently on view. The decrepit, if not haunting structure became for Vote a symbol of displacement, cultural isolation, familial hardship and the unavoidable interconnectedness and dependencies that pit man’s incessant demands for comfort against a cyclic and unpredictable natural world. Here is a transcript of a recent conversation discussing her work, the current show and the broader concerns addressed in her studio practice.

MG: Let’s begin with some general questions before we begin discussing the show-- to help the reader get to know you better. What was the first work of art you fell in love with?
MV: Degas’s “L'Étoile”, first seen on the back of a reader's digest, around age 8.

MG: What works talk to you now?

MV: I still love Degas and so many historical masters--Leonardo, Pontormo, Bellini, Bernini just to name a few. I also love so many recent and contemporary artist’s work, to be brief, Robert Gober, Jenny Saville, Andrew Wyeth, Lucien Freud, Antonio Garcia Lopez, Ana Mendieta, Mark Dion, and William Kentridge.

MG: What, if any, allied arts (i.e. music, literature) influence your aesthetic?

MV: Both music and literature influence my work; music and audio books flow continually in the studio. I listen to music ranging from quieting/calming to energizing, selected to balance energy and maintain the flow. Regarding literature, recently I have been reading Margaret Atwood’s speculative fictional series The Trilogy--which like most good literature is predictive and unfortunately all too real now. I feel a special connection to Robin Kimmerer’s “Braiding SweetGrass”, Lucy Lipard’s “Lure of the Local”, and Mary Oliver’s poems . Their work, having a shared interest in the human-nature relationship, was living in the forefront of my mind while working on the “Washhouse: Nothing Ever Happened Here” series.

MG: At what point did you decide to become an artist? Was your path continuous or interrupted?

MV: Continuous. To be an artist seemed, not a choice, but a way of being. At age five I declared “I want to be an artist when I grow up, but I do not want to be alone in an attic.” I do not know where this thought came from. There were no other artists in my family. That said, I descend from a long line of farmers and farmers are definitely thrifty and creative DYI types that are adept at “making do” with what’s on hand in order to survive. I was also really lucky to have parents and grandparents who encouraged their children to follow their dreams.

MG: What media do you work with most often? What appeals to you most about that media?

MV: For two-dimensional work I primarily use oil paint; of all the media I’ve experimented with, it feels the most flexible. For three-dimensional work, I’m more apt to explore a wider range of materials---especially for site-specific work where the materials are intrinsic to the content of the piece. Some materials, such as watercolor, play a greater role in process--for example when I’m working out a composition or building a maquette. I may not show these pieces outside of the studio--but they are important links in the development of a body of work.

MG: Are there other artists, schools, periods, or movements (historical or contemporary) that you feel your work responds to or is in conversation with?

MV: Yes --there are so many; I relate most to the renaissance and baroque periods and works that privilege a naturalistic or realist style. Art history presents itself as a living document that I can return to repeatedly for answers to questions about expression, motive or intent---it is the basis for moving forward. I love reading Leonardo’s views on what inspires invention; he advocates the direct observation of nature to extrapolate its attendant parts followed by a re-configuration of them to express a unique vision. Equally compelling is Degas’s view of art being artifice. I also love all the exciting figuration and narration that is prominent in Contemporary Art. Going out and seeing shows is hugely inspirational and one of the primary reasons I remain in New York. But though I try to take it all in, ruminating and digesting both the historical and the contemporary, once I start painting I allow myself to let that all go and do what is natural to me. I cease judging what I am creating at that given moment and trust the process. To think about any one movement or style, or to bend the work such that its outward expression adheres to a proscribed aesthetic, would be indeed crippling.

MG: Can you describe the process that led to the creation of your current body now on display at Equity Gallery? What was your inspiration?

MV: “The Washhouse” is inspired by a rural property in Iowa that belongs to my friend and poet Kelly Madigan. I began visiting her there after we met in a residency program at Jentel in 2009. The property is about 100 miles from where I grew up; it would serve as a sort of a home away from home--- save for one unique geological feature-- steep hills formed thirty odd thousand years ago by glaciers descending from the north. The terrain renders the land largely unfarmable-- an anomaly for the Midwest’s grain belt celebrated as "America’s Breadbasket” for its agricultural abundance. Largely undisturbed by man, the hills are blanketed in native prairie grass--a divinely balanced ecological habitat timelessly preserved in a primitive, pre-cultivation remnant state. Being in this place reminds me of what Jane Goodall said in a video made for Earth Day in 2018. Describing being in a rainforest she notes, “ …there you learn how everything is interconnected and how each little species, that may seem insignificant, has a role to play in this tapestry of life.” Here in this landscape, the fleeting light, the air and the sound of nature’s orchestra is intoxicating and inspiring; painting there comes with ease as I am filled with a sense of urgency.

MG: Does the work attempt to establish a single narrative or are there interweaving or overlapping voices speaking?

MV: I have been contemplating this landscape for over a decade now and it continues to reveal its intricacies and complexities. The work, even one painting, mirrors that complexity with a variety of interlocking narrative threads. The overarching story focuses on the lure of the natural world--the story within that story foregrounds nature’s cycles as symbols of growth and decay and by extension, life and death. I grew up in the country on a working farm (my dad still farms) and loved being outside as a child. When the summer would come to a close, the foreboding cries of the cicadas were taunting, just antagonizing to me. The thought of summer ending was maddening! Why? Was it the folly of youth fighting the inevitable and the impermanent? Later in life that willfulness gives way to an ever burning sense of one's own mortality that pushes us forth to seize the day! Mary Oliver says this better than I can put to words:

The Summer Day (excerpt)

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to

do with your one wild and precious life?

I love the land; land is history--it bears witness to the many who lived there before, the native peoples, the pioneers, and the farmers living there today, all coming into being, then eventually folding back into the landscape, some remembered, most forgotten. To most, the Midwest is viewed as a sleepy place-- fly-over country. Like most places however, it is not without conflict and turmoil, from battles over land ownership and use, to diasporas seeded in the name of progress, to the current opioid crisis.

MG. For the moment focusing on the paintings, it appears that you work both from a direct/perceptual basis as well as create works that appear to be pure studio inventions. Is that observation correct and if so can you elaborate on these processes.

MV. I generally work directly from life---but I am not after a faithful reproduction of an observed motif. I edit, omit, superimpose and juxtapose elements in the composition to express a concept or narrative. Technically speaking, I use whatever methods of “seeing” that work best, painting from life first, documenting the experience through drawings, photos, then setting up still lives of objects in the studio and so on, making it work together however seems best.

MG: Moving now to your installation piece, can you say a few words about that? How does that work tie in with your painting? Does it aim to reiterate an overarching narrative or motive?

MV: The skeletal structure of the Washhouse serves as a visual bridge between all the paintings. It is meant to both fill in pieces of a puzzle and create questions at the same time. My hope is that people will look at it and wonder, what it is and why it is there? And try to put together a story of their own of what happened here for themselves. I want it to engage with a viewer that in general is oversaturated with images, ask them to come inside, slow down, look around and try to answer some type of riddle.

MG: Are there any final thoughts about your show that you’d like to share?

MV: Yes; I fear there is a far larger and harrowing narrative that my work calls attention to. Acting as counterpoint to my love and connection to the natural world, the works “Stain” and “Evidence” reference the unabated and alarming impact humans are having on the landscape. We are clearly at a crux in a road, the climate crisis is an overwhelming reality. The vast majority of the human population live in cities and have little connection to the land. Big industry and monoculture have taken over. Our universal home is over-populated and burdened by contemporary systems. There needs to be a change! But are we too late or can we as a society make strides to save the environment? I wonder how art can make a difference.

In Conversation with Melanie Vote

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