Finlandia University is currently
hosting an art exhibit at the Gallery, which is located at the Finnish
America Heritage in Hancock. The month long exhibit which opened on
January 11th features the work of Artist Melinda Steffy.
Thursday evening the University hosted
an opening reception for the Philadelphia Artist. Steffy gave a talk to
the audience gathered there to view the exhibit.
Steffy’s
art consists of a variety media, painting, textiles and a variety of
other objects.
According
to the artist, her wok draws inspiration from her interests in memory,
mythology, alchemy, geology, family history, and music. The artist
explains the details of her work in the video below.
video above - Artist addresses the audience
Carrie Flaspohler, director of the
Finlandia University Gallery, notes that the poetry of Steffy’s work
lies in her ability to translate philosophical concepts into visually
complex and abstract compositions. The materials she chooses to use in
her art-making are an integral part of the finished piece.
“For me,” Steffy says, “untraditional or re-used materials carry with
them meaning from their previous lives or original purposes, and so add
conceptual complexity to artwork.”
To enhance the meaning of the materials she uses, Steffy makes her own
dyes and pigments from plants, nuts, and spices, which often have
medicinal properties or applications beyond their common uses. Steffy
states that the tediousness of the paint-making process, as with the
stitching, sewing, papermaking, and other repetitive tasks required in
her artwork, invests her even more deeply in her art.
Consolation/Remembrance
This
exhibit is, in part, a look into the nature of her grandfather’s
memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease. “Memory defines who we
are,” reflects Steffy. “As my grandfather gradually lost his
memory, he also lost his gentle personality, his confident
identity, his profound sense of purpose. The small, vivid
details that formed his life diminished to minuscule pinpoints
surrounded by a vast blankness of forgetting.”
“I imagine him sitting in a stark white room watching helplessly as the
once familiar scenes around him are slowly erased, leaving behind only a
few incongruous and meaningless objects—the memory remnants of a once
vibrant life.”
“I like the word ‘remnants’,” says Steffy of the exhibit’s title.
“They’re fragments that you’re rescuing from a former life. What they
were used for in that previous life is somehow being carried through.
It’s not the end of the story.”
above -
Fable (Loss and Its Recovery)
Included in the Finlandia University exhibit are the compositions:
“Fable (Loss and Its Recovery),” with more than 350 found barrettes on
individual paper pieces stitched together by the artist;
“Fugue (Grandmother’s Favorite),” featuring ink drawings on paper
hand-made from 80-year-old sheet music; and “Aubade (Mnemosyne Sings),”
comprising nine five-foot-square canvas panels dyed vibrant yellow using
turmeric.
above -
Aubade (Mnemosyne Sings)
“The repetition and the monotony, even though I may cringe at them,
become ritual and rhythm,” she adds. “They make me part of the meaning
of my work and add elements of time and spirituality.”
Introductions II (Venus Receives)
Introductions I (Maas Enters)
Steffy received her master of fine arts degree in painting in 2006 from
the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. She also earned a bachelor’s
degree in religious studies at Eastern Mennonite University,
Harrisonburg, Virginia.
The Seventh Day
Ode (Hestia Travels)
Oneness
Steffy’s work has been exhibited in
Philadelphia at the Sam Quinn, Rosenwald-Wolf, F.U.E.L. Collection, and
Highwire art galleries. It has also been shown at Villanova (Penn.)
University; William Paterson University, Wayne, N.J.; the MicroMuseum,
Brooklyn, N.Y.; the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts,
Wilmington; and the Lancaster (Penn.) Museum of Art. Her mural, “In
Remembrance,”, hangs at the Tshwane Leadership Foundation in Pretoria,
South Africa.