September 28, 2017
We love to support our neighbors here in the Clemente and our annual spring open studios event is a great way to meet and engage with them. Erick found this wonderful gem from resident artist Melanie Vote this year. He designed the frame with a great angled maple molding. The outside finish is a beautiful hand stained bordello with 22K gold leaf. We framed the artwork in a shadowbox style using a prime float technique - floating the work on museum board with rice paste and mulberry paper hinges. The design was completed using spacers, and museum glass. The result is a mini masterpiece!
Melanie Vote's painting based on a doll's head in its beautiful hand stained and hand gilded custom frame
Melanie Vote is a native of rural Iowa who has been living and working in NYC for nearly twenty years. She received her BFA in Craft Design from Iowa State University and her MFA in Painting from New York Academy of Art. She was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007 and has completed several residencies including the AHAD, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world.
Details of the closed corner frame and 22K gold leaf finish
Vote’s work addresses artifacts, relics, and contemporary icons. In 2007 she began making plaster replicas of her childhood toys. She feels the whiteness creates a relationship to archaic sculptural forms. And although she feels an intimate attachment to these objects, she sees the plaster as rendering them more universally appealing. Vote uses the figures as subjects for her fantastical paintings. The image we framed is based on one of her baby doll heads.
Artist Melanie Vote in her studio at the Clemente (image courtesy of the Clemente)
Melanie Vote is represented in NYC by Hionas Gallery here on the Lower East Side and it’s always great to work with artists within our local community. Besides being our home-base, The Clement houses theater and exhibition spaces and is home to dozens of artist’s studios. As always we encourage you to visit or stop by for a consultation whenever you’re in the neighborhood.
