Melissa A. Calderon - PRONE [Reality | My Unemployed Life series]

Melissa A. Calderon - PRONE [Reality | My Unemployed Life series]
  • Title: PRONE [Reality | My Unemployed Life series]
  • Dimensions: 11
  • Materials: satin & cotton thread hand embroidery on linen
  • Primary Medium:
  • Year Created: 2011
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Artwork Description


PRONE [from Reality | My Unemployed Life series, 1 of 4], satin & cotton thread hand embroidery on linen, 11” x 14”, 2011 The lovingly embroidered pieces that make up Reality| My Unemployed Life --- Control, Luck, Benefit, and Prone – are creations that resulted from my period of meditation on the nature of work and the life of an artist. Through them, I converted a difficult, fallow time of unemployment into a starting place for beauty, thoughtfulness, even humorous works based on the trappings of unemployment. With this work, I honor my grandmother, who labored as a seamstress in the clothing factories in the 1940s and taught me to sew. Embroidery is women’s tradition that is both aristocratic enough for leisure and common enough for labor; I decided to take up a needle, channel my grandmother, and make work about my life of right now. There is nothing more tedious than hand embroidery; each work took 4 months to make, 6 to 9 hours every day.

Melissa A. Calderon

Melissa A. Calderon

Melissa A. Calderon was born in 1974 and attended CUNY Lehman College in the Bronx. Using installation, photography, sculpture and video, the foundation of her work remains rooted in exploring the gap of disconnection from traditional roles; whether they are gender or culturally based. Parts of the work address the depth and breath of assimilation within various contexts of Latino identity and culture; the trying to find and redefine culture when markers have been lost between generations. She has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Queens Museum, The Portland Museum of Art, Hunter College, Taller Boricua, Arsenal de la Puntilla in Puerto Rico, and BronxArtSpace among others. Melissa is a PEPATIAN artist; a South Bronx-based organization dedicated to creating, producing and supporting contemporary multi-disciplinary art by Latino and Bronx-based artists founded by Pepon Osorio and Merian Soto. She continues to be an advocate and activist for arts revitalization in the South Bronx. Melissa founded the Mott Haven loft series CONVERSIONs and has co-founded organizations such as Haven Art Space and Coalition of Mott Haven Artists. Recently, Melissa was included in Frescos, a book featuring work of 50 contemporary artists from Puerto Rico and is currently an artist in residence at Residency Unlimited – Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education . A self-taught artist, she lives and works in the Bronx.

Website: www.melissacalderon.com

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