Art for the Situation

Melissa Smedley is an artist, writer and educator currently based in Salinas, California. Whether designing public sculpture, inventing performances, blogging, video-making or teaching, her goal is to engage art through the performance of everyday life: to create, discover and transmit art, in a great variety of forms.

She received her undergraduate education at Brown University, and continued with her MFA at UCSD in 1993.

Smedley served as lecturer at CSU Monterey Bay, UCSD, and SouthWestern College in the San Diego region.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

 

Melissa Smedley is an artist, writer and educator currently based in Salinas, California. Whether designing public sculpture, inventing performances, blogging, video-making or teaching, her goal is to interpret the world by discovering, creating and transmitting art in a great variety of forms: Smedley makes art for the situation.

She received her undergraduate education at Brown University, and continued with her MFA at UCSD in 1993.

Smedley served as “lecturer” for the Visual and Public Art Department at CSUMB (Cal State Monterey Bay) for six years. While living in the San Diego area 1990- 2006, Smedley taught at UCSD and Southwestern College.

Since 2010, the artist activist has been operating The Department of Homeland Inspiration: here “The Art Ranger” watches out for art, curating “found art” images that may have been discovered in a parkinglot. Art Ranger is also the purveyor of commentary on various absurd conditions of daily living, as well as tuned Art angles.

Recent videos:

Funerals for Trees

Frack Age

More examples of her work history can be viewed at: www.melissasmedley.net

Bio
Consulting

MELISSA SMEDLEY – Artist at-Large

 

831 - 737-5360              www.melissasmedley.net                 artranger.blogspot.com

EXHIBITIONS and PERFORMANCE:

GOOD AND MAD: Pre-election Pop Up, Open Ground Studios, Seaside, CA

Powerama: spoken word, sculptural performance, PGAC, October 5, 2018

DesEscondido: California Center for the Arts, Escondido: group; Public Address

September 2018 

MAD2 with Critical Ground at Pacific Grove Art Center, September – November 2018

Storming The Wall: interactive performance with Todd Ayoung, Doris Bittar, sponsored by CAMP: Center for Migration Politics, Copenhagen, Dk.   Roskilde Festival, July 2018

Perishables:  Room installation, presentations: Open Ground Studios, Seaside, CA November 2017

Funerals for Trees: video, Monterey Youth Film Festival, April 28 – 30 2016

Frack Age:  Video and performance at the Unruly Engagement Conference: Cleveland Institute of Art, November 2014.

M/otherwork, Open Ground Studios, April 2014, Seaside California.

Labor/ Migrant/ Gulf, Southwestern College Gallery, March 2014  San Diego, California.

A group exhibition inspired by and in solidarity with laborers worldwide

ENACT an online exhibition: enact-artinthemind.com, part of the 25th year anniversary of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, May 2013

Department of Homeland inspiration – A collective video performance, CSUMB Department of Visual and Public Art, September 2007

 “The Book of Lies”, New Acquisitions, The Atheneum, La Jolla, California, March 2005

Inventing Agriculture - concurrent exhibition at Art Produce, and Hybrid Gallery San Diego, CA

Installation and performative sculptures, June - September 2002.

I-5 Resurfacing - Four Decades of California Contemporary Art - San Diego Museum of Art

Video (samples), April 2002

Off Broadway, (group) Museum of Contemporary Art, Downtown, San Diego, CA, February 2000

Paratools, (solo) Mesa College Art Gallery, San Diego, CA January 2000

BUSINESS:  Artist At Large Consulting - an art implementation service.  We write proposals, source artists, manage jury process, artist contracts, and construction of public art projects as well as coordinate participatory art exeriences for the general public.  2011 – present.

PUBLIC ART

Knots in Bronze – The Wharf at Point Loma - Three bronze sculptures in plaza, San Diego Port District.  Installation January, 2009.

The Leaf: a conversation in bronze, May 2006.  Ellis Atrium, Sonoma, California.

Equipment Field, a series of seven sculptures installed at Denver Broncos: Sports Authority Field,August 2001, collaborators: Mathieu Gregoire, Ante Marinovic. 

Teaching Experience:

CSUMB, Lecturer with the Department of Visual and Public Art, VPA

Fall 2010 – 2016: Courses: Beginning Sculpture 2010, 2012, 2014, Advanced Sculpture 2010, Digital Public Art 2011-2012, Art for Teachers 2013-2015, Ways of Seeing 2014, Street Art Excavations -2015.

First Year Seminar, CSUMB: Youth Power and Protest, 2013-2016

University of California, San Diego, UCSD: Visiting Scholar, Department of Visual Art: Drawing, Media Sketchbook, Fiction and Allegory in Contemporary Media Practice, 1999-2006.

Southwestern College, Chula Vista, California: Visiting Lecturer: 3-D Design, 2001-2003

Bibliography

Local Artist Ties the Knots:  “The Californian”, by Dave Norstrand, December 13, 2008

Adjusting the View by Robert Pincus, “The San Diego Union Tribune”, December 27, 2001

Special Team: Local artists score big with sculpture at Denver Stadium, by Robert Pincus, “The San Diego Union Tribune”, June 25, 2001

Contemporary Quirkiness. ‘Off Broadway’ is broad enough to get to know the artists, by Robert Pincus “The San Diego Union Tribune”, February 24, 2000

Reviews – New York, by Faye Hirsch “Art Forum International”, October 1995

Pilgrims & Pop Pioneers,  “New Observations” #108  September/October

That Very Human Enterprise, by Leah Ollman “Los Angeles Times”, June 3, 1995

Installation Gallery, Insite '94  catalog, September 1995

California Center for the Arts Museum, California in Three Dimensions, Catalog, May 1995

Zany Magic, by Ann Jarmusch “The San Diego Union Tribune”, October 9, 1994

EDUCATION

Brown University, Visual Art Department, BA 1984

University of California at San Diego, M.F.A. in Visual Arts, 1993

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture , 1985

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