On expanses of beige linen, Melissa Calderón immortalizes pockets of a neighborhood or home house. Combining imagery from her childhood within the Bronx along with her household’s native Puerto Rico, the artist interprets acquainted landscapes and sights into vivid embroideries, preserving her recollections in thread.
The intimate compositions seize how neighborhoods and communities change, notably as long-time residents are displaced. Her present physique of labor, titled Gentrified Landscapes, explores “a place that once was but is now between the two spurts of gentrified-led divestment and revitalization and how this particularly affects the Bronx and Puerto Rico.”
Calderón embraces the potential of thread so as to add texture and emphasize the extra conceptual components of her work. “Villa Nueva (I’d Still be Puerto Rican even if born on the Moon),” for instance, drapes comfortable, inexperienced chenille throughout the composition like a lush cluster of vines. “Prone IV | My Underemployed Life series” includes a inexperienced couch unraveling into tangled fibers that spill off the canvas.
In her studio, Calderón focuses on the meditative, entrancing course of of sewing. Works start with a drawing that’s transferred to a sample and freehand rendered onto the linen. She enjoys the gradual, methodical actions, which remind her “of times I sewed with my grandmother, making Cabbage Patch Kids clothes to sell on the playground before school started for the day. Embroidery takes me to a calm place where only the process matters.”
At present, Calderón is engaged on a couple of commissions and making ready for a solo exhibition in Puerto Rico. She additionally not too long ago started a large-scale work titled “Bodega Miles” that may stretch 40 inches huge and take greater than a 12 months to finish. You possibly can comply with her progress on Instagram.
