ARTIST STATEMENT
Over the past three years, I have repurposed envelopes containing bills, bank statement and other information requiring privacy into a series of works on security paper. My work is strongly influenced by the environments I am working in and my environmental concerns. The mountains surrounding the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, where I had a residency, appear in some works, along with the Shawnee National Forest surrounding my old farmhouse in Southern Illinois. The rust belt industrial buildings of St. Louis, my home-away-from-home, also play a role. Most of the works involve bird silhouettes. The well-being of birds looms large in my life as my home lies along one of the largest migratory bird routes in the country—the Cache River Flyway.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mel Watkin’s work has been shown nationally with solo exhibitions at Franklin Furnace Archives, New York, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, and A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn. Recent group exhibitions include the American University Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan and Longue Vue House and Garden, New Orleans. In 2023, the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago exhibited three commissioned map-based works and the Southern Illinois Cancer Institute commissioned eight small works on paper. Watkin’s work is in the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Illinois State Museum, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas at Lawrence, the Book Art Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Franklin Furnace Archives, among other venues. She create a permanent public artwork fabricated in collaboration with Franz Mayer of Munich, Germany for the “C” Concourse at St. Louis International Airport. Grant awards include a 2024 Franklin Furnace/Xeno Artists Book Prize, 2000 and 2022 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Critical Mass grant, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, and a Pyramid Atlantic artist’s book award. Her residencies including the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois, and Palazzo Rinaldi, Noepoli, Italy.
© Mel Watkin