Grantham, PA — Philadelphia artist Melinda Steffy was devastated to watch her grandfather’s memory and personality deteriorate over nearly a decade of Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, she was drawn to the idea that memory is the foundation of identity – both individual and community – and so began constructing what she calls a “memory room” of “painting/textile/objects,” with the intention of creating new systems for sustaining memory.
The artwork in the exhibit Collecting Stones: Minerals and Material Memory, on display at the Grantham Church Art Gallery beginning July 25, 2010, frequently uses methods familiar to sewing and quilt-making, while also including paintings and metal-work. Steffy, a Central PA native and graduate of Mechanicsburg Area Senior High, is returning to her hometown for her first solo exhibition in the area. A free public reception and artist talk will take place at the gallery on Sunday, July 25 from 11:45am-2:00pm.
“I felt like I needed to catch memory before it disappeared,” says Steffy, “not necessarily specific memories, but the whole structure of memory.” As a result, the idea that materials have meanings from their previous uses becomes a central focus, and many pieces include found objects, secondhand fabrics, family keepsakes, hand-made pigments or house paints. Items like antique lace, the spice turmeric, tarnished copper, used teabags and dead ladybugs all have symbolic meanings that are transferred to the artwork.
Steffy elaborates, “Turmeric, for example, is a sacred Hindu spice. It’s a staple ingredient of many curries and was traditionally used on the skin as a beauty product. Now, recent scientific studies have shown that eating turmeric helps prevent memory loss and dementia. So, turmeric makes this amazing yellow dye that ends up being about much more than just the color. I use it as the incarnation of Memory.”
A large textile-work titled Aubade: Mnemosyne Sings contains nine five-foot-square panels of fabric patches that have been loosely sewn together and dyed yellow with turmeric. An “aubade” is a song for the morning and the title references the goddess of memory who gave birth to the nine muses. The panels can be arranged differently to accommodate different galleries, but the desired effect is to flood the installation space with the warm glow of the yellow fabric and suggest the essence of the creative spirit.
Many works include references to Greek mythology or alchemy, which according to Steffy, are both based on an effort to preserve memory. “Mythology is essentially collective memory. It’s what an entire community has to say about itself and its history and spirituality. Alchemy deals more with materials, with the idea that matter has an inherent essence. If you can combine the right essences just the right ways, you’ll transform the matter into the foundational material of life itself.”
Aspects of geology and rock collecting also appear in several pieces. Mineral (Orange), Mineral (Yellow) and Flow contain mixtures of oil and acrylic paints that depict close-ups of actual mineral formations. In Steffy’s view, the formation of minerals correlates to the creation of memory: “These beautiful minerals were formed when liquid rock settled together and eventually solidified. At some point it was all very fluid, and even though it seems solid now, it can still be worn down. It can still change depending on the environmental factors around it. Memory, I think, works the same way: there’s this formational period when everything’s in flux, then at some point the memories settle in to their ‘offical’ form, and then there’s the natural weathering over time.”
In Four Corners, Steffy wove together thin strips of copper into a textile-like surface and then tarnished it so that it will continue to change over time. The piece Remark also re-imagines textiles and suggests changeability as unraveled canvas threads have been laid into a delicate skin of deteriorating latex house paint.
Steffy received a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from The University of the Arts and a Bachelor of Arts degree in religious studies from Eastern Mennonite University. Her artwork has been on display at the Sam Quinn Gallery, Villanova University, Finlandia University, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Lancaster Museum of Art, Micro Museum, Stamford Art Association, the F.U.E.L. Collection, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Highwire Gallery and George School, among others, and she was recently a prize-winner in the 29th annual Faber Birren Color Award Show. She has taught art classes and workshops and previously worked as a freelance art reviewer, primarily covering contemporary art in the Philadelphia region. Additionally, Steffy’s artwork has taken her to other parts of the world, such as South Africa, where she gave bead-working classes for small-business ventures and constructed a mural with homeless adults, and Guatemala, where she studied Mayan back-strap loom weaving.
The exhibit is on display through August 28, 2010. Contact the Grantham Church for hours and other information: 717-766-0531 or www.granthamchurch.org. For more information about the artist, visit www.melindasteffy.com.
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