Meshell Melvin 2025 Finalist

Artist Bio

From her beginnings and fine art education in southern Ontario to the home in the North she chose, Meshell Melvin has fashioned a professional art practice that spans over thirty years. Her images reflect an interest in her community and the natural world around them. Meshell’s strongest relationship is with textile, a medium that she shares with a rare industrial chain-stitch embroiderer. Together, in an act of public portraiture they have performed at Yukon festivals, and as a member of the cultural team representing the North at the Vancouver Olympics. For a number of years, she independently studied animation and produced two short animated films. She has exhibited widely. Her work hangs in private and public collections, and has been featured in print, radio, television and is the subject of two short documentary films. Recently, Meshell was invited to participate in Louise Lemieux Bérubé‘s traveling exhibition, “Around the World with 80 Textile Artists“, which will open this December-March 2025 at the MuMAQ – Musée des métiers d’art du Québec.

Artist Statement

I approach fabric with the aesthetic of a painter, eager to get her fingers into the paint. I cherish my ofttimes drawing tool and brush; an obsolete industrial chain stitch embroidery machine. I find images and 1narratives in the landscape, in people, and in my own experiences. I am not often without my sketchbook. Ever curious and keen to experiment, I use many of my tools and materials in non-traditional ways. I am at my best when I am creating.

Early in my career, my first pregnancy inspired a break from oil painting, and a search for a non-toxic medium. A year of exploration landed me in a relationship with textile and after 30 years, it still provides me with the greatest delight. I am enamoured with fabric; I love the colour, patterns, and textures and how they feel in my hands. The stories and histories connected to each piece in the collection is like the chatter of old friends. Much of my path in this medium has been without a chart; there have been puzzles to solve and ideas, techniques, and methods to investigate. Most recently I have learned to use a laser cutter in our local maker space. This technology has transformed my process; it made possible a migration of salmon and all the berries of the season.

The images are collaged with fabric and then permanently attached to the canvas with the chain-stitched line of my embroidery machine. The Universal Movement Machine was invented in 1865 and named for the capacity of the needle and foot to move in a multi-directional way. By maneuvering a handle underneath the machine, I am able to guide a continuous line of stitches over a piece of fabric. Akin to the way that textile became my painting medium, embroidery became my line. To explore the correspondence of drawing and embroidery I began to make contoured portraits with the machine. In 2003, Art Festival bound, the embroiderer and I set out for the first time to demonstrate and perform in public. I was joyful. I had found something that felt entirely on the mark for me. Terrifying, challenging, fun, and full of intimate and creative exchange. The outrageous idea of “drawing everyone in the Yukon”, came in this first year. I will never draw all of us, but I have made a lifetime commitment to embroidering as many of us as I can.

My practice is both personal and social, believing art has a function for both artist and viewer. The objective is to have the work connect with the audience; that there might be a movement of feeling, of memory, of thinking, and new ways of seeing. I feel I have a role within the community; to light up the imagination, and to advocate for creativity as an instructor, performer, and maker.