Melissa Weiland

Since my earliest childhood, I have been a compulsive maker and obsessively curious– only happy when creating or learning something new. I badgered my mother into teaching me both crochet and long division before I was 6. For just as long I have been fascinated by materials science, wanting to understand what things are made of, why they act the way they do, and how they interact with other materials. As an adult, I try to still approach all of my artistic work in the same spirit of creative play. My artistic practice is a fundamental extension of who I am, grounded in meditation, curiosity, and experimental exploration.

Over the past twenty years, exploration and curiosity has propelled me across mediums to an interdisciplinary practice. Technical interest (and eventually expertise) drew me into computers and new media art. From video and motion workflows to photography, digital sculpting, and digital painting, I have had a meandering pathway to traditional visual art. I am always eager to expand, experiment, and share my knowledge and skills. To look more closely at any one medium, technique, process, or concentration, is to change the way I see all others. I strive to make my individual works as interdisciplinary as my practice, which draws me to mixing media. In my earliest experimentations with mixed media, I rescued blue foam dryer sheets from the wash to glue to my childhood drawings.As an adult, my vision is to transcend my medium– to move beyond traditional techniques and processes to incorporate lessons, materials, and ideas from other mediums and aspects of my creative exploration.