Flying somewhat under the radar of art
world glitterati, Melissa Stern has,
nonetheless, had a very solid and
successful career. She exhibits
regularly in diverse venues and her art
graces a number of notable private and
institutional collections. While her
primary output is in clay, her works on
paper explore many of the same themes
and, like her clay work, are notable for
their spontaneity, raw emotional power
and haunting quality. She is also much
valued as a teacher by those privileged
to work with her (this author among
them).
Stern is first and foremost an artist
concerned with the human condition writ
small. She is a master at capturing
fleeting, fugitive emotions — moments of
indecision and petty humiliations,
yearnings quickly tamped down, rage and
terror in the living room, the exquisite
torture of shyness, the cleansing laugh
of absurdity — all those inconvenient
emotions that we oh-so-quickly paper
over with a veneer of bonhomie and our
social mask.
Born and raised in Philadelphia,
educated as an anthropologist, now a
wife and mother living and working in
the heart of New York’s Chelsea
district, Stern is happily female,
happily urban (a country home upstate
helps preserve balance), relentlessly
adventurous, and inexhaustibly
compassionate. Her sunny disposition
belies the poignancy of her work. The
so-called “inner child” is an icon of
contemporary pop psychology and
self-help books, but in Stern’s work the
inner child is seen from the safe
distance of adulthood, an adult who
knows that ultimately vulnerability is
strength, and geek passions are
liberation. Her work tells the touching,
eventful, zany story of our humanness,
how we hurt, how we ache, and ultimately
how we triumph.
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BIRTHDAY GIRL— clay, metal 24 x 6 x
11 1997 |
Almost always figural, even if stripped
of limbs and appendages, Stern’s work
exists in a fuzzy state between
universality and specificity. In
reviewing her 1996 show at the Bachelier
Cardonsky Gallery in The New York Times
(December 15, 1996), William Zimmer said
of Stern’s figures that “in their
essentialness they are patterns for all
humans”, yet one can argue that each is
given a mark, an emblem, or
characteristic that makes the figure
unique, an individual. Zimmer found the
work “reminiscent of preclassical Greek
sculpture…not only because Ms. Stern
frequently leaves off limbs, mimicking
the imperfect state in which ancient
works are usually discovered, but
because the figures are usually
intensely rudimentary, cylinders topped
by elongated spheres. They have no faces
but definite nobility nonetheless.”
Vivien Raynor, also writing in The New
York Times (August 2, 1992) found
African, Cycladic and Surrealist
influences in Stern’s work. In fact,
Stern’s style is profoundly her own, and
her art, by turns gentle, compassionate,
hysterical, vengeful, rueful and funny,
reflects the courage to own both
“positive” and “negative” emotions.
A wonderful quality of Stern’s work is
its lasting freshness. “What?” a
rudimentary torso with red mugs for ears
makes you laugh when you first see it,
and also makes you laugh every time you
see it. The joke never gets stale.
“Birthday Girl” is a tiny tot dressed in
frilly femininity scowling her way
through her own birthday party. It is a
reminder of how our own emotions — ever
unreliable — sometimes make a hash of
what should be a pleasure. “Too Many
Friends” comments on the limits of
compassion when our hearts are open, but
our calendars are full.
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17 REASONS WHY—clay and mixed
materials, 7 feet, 1989
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While she often worked very large
earlier in her career. Her large
sculpture “17 Reasons Why” from 1989 is
7 feet tall. In the late 1990s, perhaps
because of the influence and exigencies
of having a small boy, son Max, in her
home, Stern worked in a more intimate,
“table top” size. Perhaps Max inspired
“Back to School”, a collection of
drawings Stern exhibited at the
Children’s Museum of the Arts (NYC) in
2003, and “Vacation” a suite of small
clay and multi-media figures exhibited
at the Spike Gallery (NYC) that same
year. Recently, with the production of
“Birdland” a multi-figure, multi-media
installation — exhibited at the David
Lusk Gallery (Memphis, TN) in March 2006
— Stern has returned to scale as an
integral part of her work. It is a
welcome change, putting her work on more
of a museum or institutional scale, and
demanding attention on that level.
A consummate teacher, Stern is very
articulate about her own work, and can
talk about her inspirations and
processes with confidence and clarity.
“Birdland” refers both to the jazz great
Charlie Parker, nicknamed Bird, and to
Birdland, the venue
where he often performed. Composed of 24
black and white
figures set in a field of 600 red silk
poppies, Stern’s “Birdland”
is her tour de force. The figures are
humanoid birds that bear an uncanny
resemblance (maybe it’s the beaks!) to
the hapless cartoon figures of Edward
Koren in The New Yorker. These are not
country birds. Their eyes are
startlingly human and knowing (Stern
used artificial eyes for birds and
reptiles made for taxidermists).
The figures, ranging in height from 10
to 43 inches, are assembled in a field
of poppies, the symbol of Morpheus,
referring to the dream state of sleep or
opium-induced visions (Parker died at 34
of alcohol and heroin addiction).
As in all of her work, the figures are
stripped down, reduced to their essence,
and in this case limited to two colors —
black and white — in order to emphasize
their sculptural qualities. The larger
figures stand over the poppies, while
the small figures are half-hidden,
inviting interaction on the part of the
observer, who gradually discovers them
amongst the flowers.
The recipient of many awards and honors,
Stern holds a Masters in Ceramics from
the State University of New York at New
Paltz, and has exhibited both nationally
and internationally since 1983. In 2004,
she was invited to exhibit as a featured
artist at the World Ceramic Biennale in
Seoul, Korea. The totality of her work
exhibited was purchased for the
permanent collection of the new
Contemporary Art Museum to open in Seoul
in 2010. Her work is included in the
permanent collections of Dow Jones, Bear
Stearns and the Arkansas Art Center
among others. A solo drawing exhibition
is scheduled at Wesleyan University in
October, 2006.
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BIRDLAND—installation.
Clay, paint, glass, graphite,
steel, flowers, dirt.
Approximately 20 x 20 feet, 2006 |
