Melissa Nott

Born and raised in one of the Pacific Northwest's more rural areas, Melissa has been influenced by small town comerce and how it differs from the surrounding metro areas. As change happens with the opening of world markets, small town impacts are exagerated as industry adaptations are not favorable to the average American household. Looking closer at the cause and effect of how we got here, blame is often a shifty dynamic that has everything to do with the great dollar that is waving over the heads of us all.

Melissa has earned her BFA in painting and drawing from Central Washington University in 2008. Durring the last year of her schooling she earned the C. Farrel Merrit Scholarship for which she completed "Hemstitch and the Mandrel".

Hemstitch and the Mandrel is a C. Farrell Scholarship project that investigates consumer desire through the creation of five monumentally sized paintings of retail shop windows, painted life-size and installed in an art gallery. After measuring and photographing approximately 30 shop windows around the Seattle, Bellevue, and Portland shopping centers, I choose five images with the strongest compositions from which to work.
By painting the images life-sized, I simulate what the average viewer may see while browsing shop windows on the street or in the shopping mall. However, my images exist in a gallery setting, where they do not have to compete for attention, and can be given a closer consideration. This method of display brings a critical view to the elements that create the narrative of desire for the objects or ideas displayed for consumption within the given space. .
For me, the most interesting part of this project is questioning how visual consumer culture seduces us. In Hemstitch and the Mandrel, I am attempting to expose the hegemony manufactured by capitalist marketing. At the same time, I am interested in using the (seemingly archaic) medium of paint to justify to myself the relevancy of painting as a contemporary artistic medium.

“Hemstitch and the Mandrel” C. Farrell Scholarship Exhibition
Sarah Spurgeon Gallery
June 3-8, 2008

Group Exhibition

2005-YVCC DOVA Student and Faculty Exhibit- Yakima Teachers Federation Award
2006-YVCC DOVA Student and Faculty Exihibit- Best of Show

“Hemstitch and the Mandrel” C. Ferrell Scholarship Exhibition
Sarah Spurgeon Gallery
June 3-8, 2008

2007 Awarded the C. Ferrell Scholarship for “Hemstitch and the Mandrel”

2007 Peggy Lewis Gallery- Yakima Allied Arts 39th Annual Juried Art Exhibit, ADD Staffing Award, Oil Painting

2006 Larson Gallery- DOVA Annual Art Students and Faculty Juried Exhibition, Best of Show, Oil Painting

2005 Larson Gallery- DOVA Annual Art Students and Faculty Juried Exhibition, YVC Federation of Teachers Award, Oil Painting