Melissa Zink Artist Statement

What we are looking for, whether in a gallery or a shop, is transportation to that remarkable state of mind which seems like a brief glimpse of Enlightenment. It is probably irrelevant how it is produced. The state of mind, I mean. Whether a Balinese tobacco container or a Rembrandt etching takes one's breath away, what is crucial is to become breathless.

Melissa Zink Resume

Born: 1932, Kansas City, MO

Home: Taos, NM

Education: Emma Willard School; Swarthmore College; University of Chicago; Kansas City Art Institute.

Married (Nelson Zink), one daughter

One-Person Shows and honors:

1981: Clay and Fiber, Taos, NM, ceramics

1981: Tally Richards Gallery, Taos, NM, drawings

1982: Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA, ceramics and drawings

1983: Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, ceramics and drawings

1985: Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA, drawings

1985: Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, ceramics and drawings

1987: Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, ceramics and drawings

1989: Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, "Dimensional Paintings"

1990: Taos Art Association and The Jonson Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, “Melissa Zink: Journeys 1977 –1990”

1991: Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, sculpture and paintings

1992: Bellas Artes, New York, "Choices/Changes," interactive sculptures

1993: University of Colorado Art Gallery, Boulder, CO, sculpture and paintings

1994: The Parks Gallery, Taos, NM, "A Non-Linear Investigation of Sticks and Their Properties," sculpture and paintings

1995: The Parks Gallery, Taos, NM, "The Book People and The Thumbprint Editions," sculpture and paintings.

1996: Roswell Museum, Roswell NM, "Melissa Zink, A Retrospective."

The Parks Gallery, Taos, NM, "An Inquiry into the Elegantly Implacable Roots of Memory," sculpture and paintings.

1997: The Parks Gallery, Taos, NM, "12 Classic Works, 1983-1996."

1998: The Parks Gallery, Taos, "The Secret Syntax of Melissa Zink"

1999: The Parks Gallery, Taos, "From the Lost Library: Volumes and Illustrations," sculpture and mixed media paintings.

2000: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., “From the States Exhibition,” New Mexico Representative

2001: Parks Gallery, “Characters,” she said. “Not Letters, Characters,” new mixed media work.

2002: St. John’s College Fine Arts Gallery, “In Retrospect, the Obsession is Clear,” survey exhib.

2004: Parks Gallery, Taos, “A Few Beautiful Mysteries,” new sculpture and mixed media.

2005: Parks Gallery, Taos, "Quiddities: Precise Ambiguities within Interrupted Continuities"

2006: Parks Gallery, Taos, "A Celebration"

2006: Harwood Museum, Taos, "Enchantment of Language," solo retrospective

2007: New Bronzes "Good Dog," Parks Gallery, Taos, NM

Selected Group Shows:

1979: Clay and Fiber, Taos, NM

1980: Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX

1980: Taos Art Association (sculpture prize)

1981: Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA, "Clay 1981"

1981: The O.J. Foundation, Albany, TX, "Taos Today, A Survey," touring show

1982: Santa Fe Festival of the Arts, Santa Fe, NM (ceramics prize)

1983: Sebastian-Moore Gallery, Denver, CO, "Crafts: New Directions"

1983: Taos Art Association, invitational

1984: Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM, "Southwest/Midwest Exchange"

1984: Lill Street Gallery, Chicago, IL

1984: Elaine Horwitch Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ

1984-85: "Anxious Interiors," touring exhibition: Laguna Beach Museum and the Art Museum Association; Alaska State Museum, Juneau; Alaska Association for the Arts, Fairbanks; Visual Arts Center of Alaska, Anchorage; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada; Visual Arts Gallery, Florida International University, Miami; USF Art Galleries, University South Florida, Tampa; Munson-Williams Proctor Inst, Utica, NY

1986: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO, "The New West Exhibition"

1986: Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

1986: Texas Tech University, The Museum, Lubbock, TX, "Neighbors"

1988: Santa Fe Festival of the Arts Invitational, Santa Fe, NM (first prize)

1989: New Mexico Arts and Crafts Fair, Albuquerque, judge and exhibitor

1990: Alexander Milliken Gallery, New York

1990: Sherry French Gallery, New York, "Illumination and Radiance: Epiphanies in Contemporary Painting," a show travelling to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA; Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC

1993: J. Cacciola Galleries, New York

1993: Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, "Metaphysics of the Room"

1994: "The Book as Art," citywide invitational exhibition in Santa Fe, NM

1994: Walton Art Center, Fayetteville, AR, "Artists of the Spirit”

1995: "Artists of America, 15th Annual Art Exhibition & Sale," Denver Rotary Club, Denver.

1996: "Contemporary American Realist Painters," Hall's Gallery, Kansas City, MO

1996: "Contemporary Art in New Mexico," curated by Jan Adlmann, Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe.

2002: Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, “From Realism to Abstraction:

Art in New Mexico 1917 - 2002

2003: Albuquerque Museum, “Originals 2003,” Albuquerque, NM

2006: "Language: The Interconnections Between Images and the Written Word," New Mexico Capitol Rotunda Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2006: Green: Inaugural Exhibition, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM

Public Collections:

Harwood Foundation Museum, Taos, NM

Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM

Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Old Jail House Foundation, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM

St. John’s College Library, Santa Fe, NM

Selected Books and Publications:

ARTlines, Taos, NM, 1981, 1983

American Ceramics, New York, 1984, 1989 American Crafts, 1993

Arts, New York, 1985

Art News, New York, 1983, 1988, 1995

Art Space, Albuquerque, NM 1983, 1988 Horizon, 1987

Journal of Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 1988

Taos Magazine, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2001

"Creative People at Work" Doris B. Wallace, Howard E. Gruber, 1989, Oxford University Press

"Exposures: Women and Their Art": Brown, Raven (authors), Love (photographer), 1989, NewSage Press

"Artists of the Spirit," Mary Carroll Nelson, 1994, Arcus Publishing

"Development and the Arts, critical perspectives," ed. by Margery B. Franklin and Bernard Kaplan, 1994, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

"Contemporary Art in New Mexico," by Jan Adlmann, 1996, Craftsman House.

Southwest Art, Houston, 1989, 1996

Sculpture Review, New York, 1997

Santa Fean, Santa Fe, 1995, 1999

Women in the Arts, “Melissa Zink’s Magical Array,” by Lisa Siegrist, Sept,. 2000

Wall Street Journal, “The Mysteries of Lines and Letters,” Hollis Walker, April 23, 2002

New Mexico Magazine, “Artists of a Different Hue,” October, 2002

Art & Antiques, “Literary License: Melissa Zink’s cryptic art tantalizes viewers,” Gussie Fauntleroy, January, 2003.

Harper’s Magazine, October 2005

Organizations:

Member National Sculpture Society

Melissa Zink: The Bronze Age
The distinguished Taos artist has turned to metal to express the companionship of books – and dogs.

Melissa Zink’s skills are obvious -- she draws, paints and sculpts like an angel. She has an uncanny grasp of materials, the ability to see the expressive potential in an old fragment of foxed paper, and the unerring compositional sense to position it for maximum aesthetic effect. Zink’s intention is always to create art that satisfies her own visual thirst. The result is work that opens our eyes a bit wider in wonder, “How beautiful!”

While Zink is indisputably a visual artist, the over-arching subject of her work is books and what she describes as the “book experience,” that particular state of consciousness one enters when engrossed in a book, a state created by the alchemical mix of words and typefaces, characters, papers, plots and bindings. Ultimately what she is communicating is a deep, transcendent feeling for what she regards as the miracle of language itself. It is the depth of this feeling and her ability to communicate it that makes her work so emotional and courageous

All serious art-making requires a certain amount of courage. Going into the studio every day, like confronting the blank page is an act of courage. Having to rely totally on ones own inner resources, without the guidance of external sources of authority requires courage. The search for a voice, the unending process of perfecting the tools with which to express it, all seem to require courage and conviction.

In Zink’s case, her career began with a more personal act of courage. As a student, she was discouraged by a prestigious art academy from pursuing a career as an artist because she didn’t cleave to the ‘important’ style of the day, abstract expressionism. She spent 20 years on the fringes of the art world, designing custom frames, running a craft shop that specialized in embroidery.

Then, one day, in her early 40s, after a divorce, her new husband asked her: If she could do anything she wanted, what would it be? “An artist,” she answered simply. Within two years, she was producing ceramic sculpture that was proclaimed as work of genius and snapped up by savvy collectors. Intriguing, often surreal vignettes involving a cast of characters – itinerant potters with canine companions, rendered with fragments of crumbling shrines or museums, they seemed set in a time and place that was part ancient Asia, part medieval Europe, later with hints of Victorian England, they were in fact set in a very particular environment that existed only in her mind.

Popular as the work was, Zink was dissatisfied that it contained only a part of her “book experience,” the story-telling part. There was much more to say, and she had the courage to push on. She added painted elements to the ceramic sculpture, went from three-dimensional work to wall pieces that often explored the territory between two and three dimensions. She added text to the sculpture/paintings, inventing new modes of expression as she went along. She returned to three dimensions for a few years and created works that had multiple moveable elements so the viewer could rearrange the piece, personalizing the association between artwork and its owner. There was a year spent exploring trompe l’oeil painting, then several years learning to use the computer to produce printed elements and the stamps that have become such an integral element in her art. She incorporated fragments from old, discarded books, though Zink is such a magician with materials that it is never obvious whether an element is ‘real’ or created by her from scratch.

For sculpture she moved from clay to resins, back to clay. Sometimes she made the clay look like wood, or the resin like gold. Eight years ago she took the leap to bronze and produced the Liberated Characters, figures based on letters of the alphabet, then the letters morphed into gestural forms, the Anthrofonts. As materials and techniques changed, so did scale. Work during the first 20 years of her career was literally of a book scale, drawing the viewer down and into the world of the piece as down and into a novel. Then suddenly in the late 1990s great, encyclopedic pieces burst forth, such as the 12-foot Environmental Study of 26 Characters, which hangs in the library at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. More recent are the Guardians (see ad), life-size bronzes that stand as protectors of the sanctity of words and ideas and a life of the mind. Like other great artists late in their careers, Zink’s work seemed to be simplifying. Faces that once were detailed to express character and individuality became in the Guardians and related works (Companionship of Readers, for example, and Books Do Balance a Life) the symbolic embodiment of a book person. Limbs disappeared, and the body utilized as form to carry the welter of stamped book elements – bits of words, flourishes from old books, illuminations, combining to create what Zink thinks of as a “mist of words.”

Stamped clearly on the back of each Guardian, however, is the legend, “Property of the Museum of the Mind,” revealing the critical importance of mind to the artist and her work.

Zink’s health has slipped some in recent years (she is 75) and time in the studio reduced from her previous Herculean work pace to a few hours a day. She decided about a year ago to devote her energies to work that would simply be about the pleasure that went into its creation. She had recently lost a beloved corgi, Holmes, and thought she’d do a series of bronzes that commemorated her affection for the dogs in her life. As she has written, “This work was inspired by Spot, Topsy, Winnie, Feather, Toby, Molly, Max, Watson, Jersey, fox, Moose, Badger, Noopy, and Holmes. Gypsy came after.”

She created a series of four “Lettered Players,” that in gesture and form express the unfettered nature of puppies, what Zink calls “the kinesthetic thrill of puppies, their roundness, their movement.” The “Reader’s Trio” are mature animals, dignified, alert, intelligent. They also express a sense of melancholy. “Dogs like these are so close to speaking,” she says, “and yet they can’t speak, and that makes me think about language and how extraordinary it is that we have it.”

Other new bronzes incorporate dogs into her classic “Guardian” forms. Reader with Companion, for example, suggests an emotional connection consonant with the artist’s relationship with books, a connection reinforced by the use of stamped elements that adorn the bronze surfaces. Among them are “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,” and “Every dog does have his day,” and the elegiac “My dear old dog most constant of all friends.”

On Reader’s Comrade, Zink, this most literate of visual artists, has stamped a Latin phrase that translates, “Who loves me, loves my dog.” – Stephen Parks
Taos Magazine, March- April 2008