melia donovan

So...this is weird...

2010-09-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

New Projects

2008-08-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Over the next year I will be in residence at Portland State University, through the State of Oregon's 1% for Art program, installing pinhole photographs (on the scale of The Clandestine Periphery -new photos have just been added to that page).

The Clandestine Periphery

2007-09-13T09:18:00.001-07:00

This is an image of a 4"x5" section of one of the six drawings in The Clandestine Periphery, part of PICA's Time Based Art Festival.

Here are some links to what people have been writing about the project:
The Portland Mercury
PICA's Volunteer Blog on UrbanHonking
The Oregonian didn't like it much....
but they did get the title wrong.
TJ Norris' discussion of the Illusion/Anti-Illusion panel.
A few words in the Willamette Week
Some more from the Willamette Week
From the Daily Vanguard
Ultra PDX

Click here to listen to the Illusion/Anti-Illusion panel with Kristan Kennedy, Larry Bamburg and myself.

Over the week of August 6-13, a crew of volunteers and I logged a total of 160 hours to poke holes in the wall at Weiden and Kennedy. You can get an idea of the size of each drawing from these installation photographs:

The project was up through October 5th, 2007. On October 6th the walls were patched and painted, rendering the invisible mural forever invisible.

News

2007-05-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

In the Fall I will be installing a mural of the "pinhole" photographs for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Art Festival. The show runs September 6 –October 7th 2007. This will be installed in the Wieden and Kennedy building at 224 NW 13th Street in Portland, OR. As a part of the festival, on September 10th, I will be participating in a panel discussion on Illusion / Anti-Illusion with Larry Bamberg and Kristan Kennedy. It's from 12:30 to 1:30 at PNCA.

In addition, I will be installing a solo show at AMO ART in Waitsburg, WA in September.

Statement

2007-05-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Through materials and processes within and outside the discipline of photography, I worry the surface of the medium. Concerned with the photographic vernacular, I often take the mechanical information of an existing image to arrive at something that is fundamentally still a photograph, often through language, without its conventional forms. Pinholes and pixels arrive on the wall in 3-dimensions out of materials of wood, paint and plastic.

Formally trained in the basements and backrooms of custom black and white photo labs in San Francisco, I received my BA in Photography at San Francisco State University. That access to unfettered and free knowledge, materials and processes pushed the notion of experimentation, which ultimately led to my MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, CUNY. In collaboration with three others, I formed an exhibition space in Chicago called The Guest Room Project. Pitting artist against artist in a monthly game show of curatorial collaboration, the space managed to gain widespread attention for it’s unusual Sunday openings and rigorous programming. My work has been shown in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, OR.

Contact

2007-05-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

meliadonovan@gmail.com

Frostie Freeze

2007-05-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

Bibliography

2007-05-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Clandestine Periphery, 2007

Frostie Freeze, 2007
Speer, Richard, "Invisible.other at New American Art Union"
Willamette Week , 25 Apr. 2007.

Douglas, Arcy, "Talking With Ghosts: invisible.other at NAAU"
PORT , 18 Apr. 2007.

Neugarten, Rachel, “Subtle Arts, Subtle Effects”
The Oregonian, Portland, OR. 13 Apr.2007.

Items of Information, 2006 #1:
Graves, Jen, “In Art News: The Not-Miami”
The Stranger, Seattle, WA. 05 Dec. 2006.

Items of Information #2

2007-05-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

Partnered in the same window at PDX Contemporary Art as Items of Information #1, Items of Information #2 acted as an animation of 3 deer walking through a forest. Utilizing information about the angle of the sun at that particular time of year, the shadow of the drawings of the deer, vinyl stickers placed on the glass of the window, moved, over the course of approximately two hours, across the drawings of trees on the background wall until the sun disappeared over the roof.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2007-05-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

2007
invisible.other
Curator: TJ Norris
New American Art Union • Portland, OR

2006
2006 Center on Contemporary Art Annual
Curator: Jennifer Gately
Center on Contemporary Art • Seattle, WA

2005
The Drawing Project
Curator: Shona Macdonald
ArtChicago 2005 • Chicago, IL

ArtFutura: Exhibition of American Art 2005
Juror: James Rondeau
Curator of Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL

1996
Girls, Girls, Girls
Exposed Photographics • San Francisco, California

Solo Exhibitions

2007-05-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

2008 (scheduled)
Pinhole Photographs
McHenry County College • Crystal Lake, IL

2007 (scheduled)
Peripheral Engagement
Amo Art Gallery • Waitsburg, WA

The Clandestine Periphery
Time-Based Art Festival
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art • Portland, OR

2006
Items of Information
PDX Contemporary Art Window Project • Portland, OR

2004
Pinhole Photographs
RMC Gallery • Chicago, IL

Education

2007-05-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

2001: Master of Fine Art • Combined Media
Hunter College • City University of New York
New York, NY

1997: Bachelor of Art • Photography
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA

Items of Information #1

2007-05-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

“Photographs convert works of art into items of information. They do this by making parts and wholes equivalent…(P)hotography annihilates our sense of scale.”
—Susan Sontag, Boston Review, 1975

Each pixel of this 8dpi image was measure on a grayscale scale of 0-100%. This measurement was fed into Ansel Adams Zone System in order to assign it a number from 0-10, 0 being black and 10 being white. These zones were assigned a dimension: zone 0 = 1/2", zone 1= 1", zone 2 = 1 1/2", etc to zone 10 = 5". Then each pixel was built up according to it's dimensional zone. What resulted was a topographical map of a photograph that when viewed from a distance flattened itself into something like the original photograph.

Family Portraits

2007-05-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Circus World

2007-05-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

Bounce

2007-05-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hector and His Present

2007-05-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hector and His Present, 2004
Plexi-glas, wood and wall-board - 6" x 7.5"

The Petting Zoo

2007-05-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Petting Zoo - Calf

The Petting Zoo - Fowl and Pig

The Petting Zoo - Goat

The Petting Zoo - Sheep

Driven

2007-05-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Photographs taken of the California farmlands out the window of a car with an old Argus camera. The images were printed on Ortho film and set inside the bottles with resin.

Clay Camera & Clay Photographs

2007-05-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

A slab clay box, fitted with foil, velvet and a film cartridge became a pinhole camera used for the express purpose of re-shooting "photographs" made from clay. These clay "photographs" were "printed" (sculpted) under an enlarger with the original negative projected onto the slab.

Little Resin Cameras

2007-05-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

A mold of a Kodak Brownie camera was made and cast with resin. During the cure, some of the cameras had reprinted childhood photographs inserted where the film plane would be on the actual camera.

Detritus Twice

2007-05-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

A jar filled with negatives, gelatin and water was left to deteriorate. It was photographed and the resulting image was placed in another jar with gelatin and water. After several months it was re-shot to show the corruption of the image.

5 Days, 5 Times, Twice Over

2007-05-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

I shot five photographs each day for five days. Printing two negatives sandwiched together over a series of 25 photographs this grid was formed.

3 Days, 2 Views

2007-05-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

Over a period of 3 days in 1999, I shot 2 rolls each day. One roll with my eye making the composition and the other from the hip. An excercise in composition and chance. This was before the proliferation of digital cameras and the camera's shift away from the body.

The images were arranged in a grid, with both rolls from each day side by side. Out of each roll a favorite was picked and it was enlarged. This enlarged print disrupted the grid causing it to shift and change course. What became obvious about the project was a tendency towards the formal when I had control over the lens and an abundance of asses when I did not.