Mel Odom: Pansy Boy
Mel Odom, "BOY," 18”x24 , 2018, pencil, colored pencil on paper
By Michael Gormley
In lock-down, Mel Odom has been busy drawing; not the kind of illustrative drawing he is famous for--the drawings that have graced couture fashion campaigns and Times best-selling book jackets. “Those drawings don’t change over the course of production”, Odom notes, “Once the creative director approves the concept sketch you’re pretty much locked in to the concept you pitched to begin with”. These drawings are more organic, evince the artist’s hand in a more loosely rendered style and aren’t meant to appeal to the rarefied aesthetic tastes of New York designers--though they certainly will.
“They are meant to woo me”, he pauses and smiles, “The pandemic has been hard on everyone, and especially hard on New Yorkers. In the best of times, I need a creative project so to not fly off the rails into wherever. During the pandemic I really needed to stretch my creative reach to stay alive. Everything had gotten so dark so quickly that I desperately needed to see something of beauty to sustain me--art can do that for us--help us hold on. I wanted to see large scale beautiful drawings, so I made them.”
At 18 x 24 inches “Boy” (pictured above) is indeed a large-scale drawing for an artist prone to working at half that scale. More telling, there is no effort made to mask technique. “In my illustration work I went to great pains to hide process and materials” Odom notes, “the image needed to have primacy. Here I allow the drawing to be foremost a drawing--a series of marks, some good, some not so good, building one on top of the other. There are no erasures or corrections, no allusion to perfection--all the evidence of process and searching is there to see. That’s why I think these drawings are so beautiful--they are beautiful in their very striving towards beauty, in a fragile and flawed human way. ”
V for Vanity, 2019, Pencil, colored pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches
And in their display of beauty they announce an unabashed gay sensibility. Odom describes a scene from a cult classic film titled “Cat People” as inspiration for “Moya Sestra?”; the drawing is a portrait of Elizabeth Russell, an actress best known for her roles in several Val Lewton low budget horror films from the 1940s. The film’s exquisite noir cinematography, the movie’s dramatic portrayal of a doomed outsider and the glamorous sets and costumes are all divinely interwoven to appeal to Odom’s love of finely wrought artifice
“Moya Sestra?” 2018, (Portrait of Elizabeth Russell,) 2019, Pencil, colored pencil and black magic marker on paper
Cameron (the gift), 2019, Pencil on vellum, 11 x 14 inches
An equally gay and earlier suite of paintings on panel are included in “Pansy Boy”. The series references Odom’s collection of civil war era porcelain dolls juxtaposed with graphic elements. Like many artifacts from that era, they have become highly charged emblems. “I’m just amazed that something this fragile and beautiful survived such a devastating war”, Odom remarks. “Many did survive because they were used to smuggle contraband and messages across enemy lines”
“Bombshell”, 2013, Oil on board, 18 x 22 inches
Other paintings, such as “Blue Fairy”, superimpose images of 1940s paper dolls with the classic cartoon graphic from the “I Love Lucy” television show. The graphic, dissected and rotated into half a dozen barely recognizable iterations makes a frequent re-appearance as a discreet element in the doll paintings. Just like Lucy herself, the paintings seem to mimic her scattered yet omnipotent presence in the collective childhood memories of boomers.
I can see a young Mel Odom blissfully cutting up dresses for his paper dolls in front to the TV while Lucy plots once again to undermine the stability of her household. Who says boys don’t play with dolls?
“Blue Fairy”, 2011, oil on board, 16 x 17 inches
To see the entirety of Odom’s “Pansy Boy” exhibit, visit our EAST WING or our Artsy Profile!