Melissa Stern lives in NYC. She studied Anthropology and Art History at Wesleyan Univ. Her mixed material sculpture and drawings are in a number of corporate and museum collections including The International Center For Collage, News Corp, Inc. Chase, The Arkansas Art Center, The Racine Art Museum, The Museum of Art and Design and The Weisman Museum. Her multi-media project The Talking Cure has been touring the US since 2012, showing at The Akron Museum of Art, Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston), The Weisman Museum, Real Art Ways (Hartford) and The Kranzberg Art Center (St. Louis). She wrote about art for The New York Press and CityArts for eight years and is a Contributing Writer to Hyperallergic. She is represented by Malin Gallery in NYC and Longmen Art Projects in Asia.

QUESTION:

“Your work seems to revel in contradiction: It’s funny but dark, playful but biting, child-like but complex. Your drawings and sculpture seem to inhabit a world of ambivalence– about childhood and motherhood, gender and relationships, memory and the present. What’s going on? Why the mixed emotions?

ANSWER:

Well the shortest and most transparent answer is that this is all about me. I think that any and all art is in some way a portrait of its maker. I’ll cop to that.

But I actually think the answer is more complex. My work can indeed be seen as childlike or naïve, but I am by no means a self-taught artist, I’m well aware of the artistic traditions that precede me. I trained as an anthropologist. I studied in particular why people make things and how objects carry power. The power of a work of art to stir someone, to elicit feeling and an inner narrative is for me the most potent superpower in the world.

And to me the most powerful of emotions are mixed emotions. We all harbor deeply contradictory feelings about our world, about our lives. As adults we may feel like old children. Our loved ones are often targets of our greatest anger. As the song goes, “there’s a thin line between love and hate.” What’s dark is sometimes funny, and this is how we face our greatest fears. There’s a reason they call it “gallows humor.” We all feel the pushes and pulls of disquieting emotions. That’s universal, although often difficult or taboo to talk about.

Family – oil stick, oil pastel, graphite on paper. 26 x 43. 2011

All of my pieces share a thematic thread. Childlike but with an inner power, my figures cower in relationships or stand tall in the face of adversity. They are at once dark and funny, expressive of the absurd world around them. They seem both deeply uncomfortable in the world and bemused and empowered by it. Gender, relationships and broader social dynamics are intertwined and deeply ambivalent.

My work– and its emotional ambiguity– are narrative triggers. Each of my pieces suggests an array of emotions, but also a fragment of a story. The viewer brings the rest. If I can make something that touches you, that stirs a memory, that reminds you of a story, well then, that’s my definition of success. We all have stories to tell, and we all respond to stories in the artwork of others.

Another Marriage – clay, oil stick, oil paint, encaustic. 15.5 x 11.5 x 5. 2015

The world is chaotic, terrifying, beautiful and absurd, now more than ever. I attempt to find this creative tension and make it visual. I mean that’s one of the reasons that people invented religion, to try to bring order to the chaos, to give us structure and a narrative within which to live. Jungian theory centers on the push-pull that we grapple with, and its therapy offers the promise of achieving “a unity of the self.” Walking that thin, tense line interests me artistically. I see and feel that keenly in my life and want to bring others along for the ride.

My hope is that I can make work that touches people, that finds that deep pulse that we share. I seek that moment of connection between the viewer and a work of art, and I do so through emotional narrative. Our memories chase us throughout our lives. Childhood is something that we’ve all been through, and it never leaves us. My work tries to rise to the challenge a child asks of its mother, “Mommy, tell me a story…”

The Green Room – oil paint, collage, clay, graphite on wood. 20 x 20 x 2. 2017