EMPTY SPACES

We installed a show of Melanie's installation work at the Access Gallery in downtown Denver's Santa Fe Art District. The work is a combination of bird mobiles, house shaped screens stretched and suspended in the space, two light sources to create a moving shadow show of flying birds onto the surfaces of the screens and an early 80's sound track that Melanie created using "peeper" frog recordings along with old 78 hand cranked turntable scratch recordings played backwards.

The installation uses sewn panels of fiberglass window screen with appliqued bird images and painted picket fences enclosing the two spaces on each side of the gallery. Small fans are placed to move the bird mobiles creating fluctuating shadows across the ceiling, walls and screens of the installation. The effect is like a bird avery let loose from the confines of an urban scene.

Melanie's statement about the show:

I am interested in constructing spaces that conjure up memory and non specific narratives. My interest in installation art derives from a desire to create an all encompassing environment that surrounds the viewer and allows them to experience stories drawing from their own personal narratives. Empty Spaces alludes to shadow plays, illusion, puppetry and memory.

I remember reading somewhere that the crow is considered to be the ‘one-eyed seer’. The Crow looks at the world with first one eye, then the other - cross-eyed. In the Mayan culture, cross-eyeds had the privilege and duty of looking into the future. In a certain way because of my cross eyed, one eyed vision, I have long identified with the crow. It is a black bird and my name means the ‘dark one’. It sees with one eye or cross eyed as I do. I have always felt that the role of the artist is to see into the future in a new way that helps to bring about a paradigm shift. I have strived to see through my disability and have used my altered vision to change my own perception of the world through my work.

With this exhibition I want to thank Access Gallery for giving me the chance to do this installation. I also want to give special thanks to my partner George Peters for all his help, support and our constant dialog about ideas and how to express them visually.

Melanie Walker

The show "Empty Spaces" will be up until April 10th, 2009

The Access Gallery is located at 909 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, Colorado

These images and more can be viewed on the slide show

CAMEREYE VOYAGEUR

We just put up a new window installation at the neighborhood Blink Gallery here in Boulder. The show features some older works but put in a more concentrated form. It includes works from an installation done for a photo show at the Houston Center for Photography during the national FotoFest.Biennial in Houston.


'Camereye Voyageur' features large photographic screens, two 'Camereye' nine foot high puppets that are manipulated by remote strings and five tripod 'peep' camera viewing boxes. Each of the cameras feature a tableau made three dimensional through layering of transparent photo images within the bellows of the light collecting cameras. The puppets are camera headed stick figures with moving arms and legs with lights in the lens and heads that give them a glow at night.

This is the third window installation we've done in the Blink Gallery window. The gallery is sadly closing because of changes in the economy but will continue in it's corporate and private art consultation business in the upstairs offices. The logo of Blink Gallery is two wide open eyes. We thought these puppets would be a perfect match for the last harrah show.

Our statement about the show:

The camera’s lens has radically affected our vision of the world. It flattens dimension, changes the real to the super real, captures time and focuses equally on the micro and macro by extending our eye. We have sent cameras instead of ourselves to orbit distant planets to take pictures of the surfaces, dive into atmospheres and wander the dusty landscapes searching for evidence of clues to our own existence here on this water and rock globe. Like puppets on long strings of radio waves we control their movements and click their shutters. The images are then sent back along the radio strings to be assembled, interpreted and analyzed. The photos tell a deep story.

The images of distant worlds show us they obey the laws of light and dark with images of rocks and ice, dust and gas. Our remote vision through the lens of space telescopes shows us how incredible this space over our heads really is.

“Who would believe that so small a space could contain an image of the entire universe?”

Leonardo di Vinci
On the camera obscura

The tableau views inside the cameras

Stone-Leaf-Fish-Bone

Rock-Ladder-Window

Wolf-Bat-Cave

Glass-Earth-Humming Bird

Excavation-Hole-Monkey

Pulling the strings causes the passers-by on the sidewalk to stop and look at the camera-headed puppets dancing in the window. The overheard comments are either "Wierd!" or "Cool!".

Blink Gallery is located at 1011 Pearl Street in Boulder.

The show will continue through to the end of March when the gallery will be closing.