Melissa Eder - "Sense of Herself" (Pink Plastic Princess Crown)

Melissa Eder

“I am interested in documenting the complexities of issues relating to female identity, popular culture and kitsch,” Melissa Eder explains. A visual artist, Ms. Eder creates photo-based works. “Sense of Herself” is an ongoing photo-based work that she started in 1995. It is an installation that consists of over 750 8”x10” images ranging from a photograph of a pink cupcake, a can of TAB, a package of ground meat, and a pink plastic baseball bat. The objects were gathered from 99 cents stores, malls, fast food shops, bodegas, and thrift shops. All objects, however mundane each may seem, convey a certain beauty as well as a personal and pop cultural relevance to her. Ms. Eder explains, “When I was about three or four, I went with my family to see a Pop Art survey show at MOMA in 1967. I can recall my parents pointing out a sculpture of French fries and a painting of a piece of cake. When I got back home to New Jersey, I painted a picture of a piece of cake with a cherry on top. I thought it was great that you could look at everything as art. I guess I still believe that notion to a certain degree. Of course, now, I acknowledge the layers of complexities of meaning(s) that create Western culture on both a personal and larger field.” Ms. Eder received her B.F.A. in painting from Parsons School of Design in New York City where she studied with Sean Scully and a M.F.A. in combined media from Hunter College in New York City where she studied with Robert Morris and received a Meritorious Award from the Alumni Association. As a visual artist, her work has been shown nationally and internationally in such venues as the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York University’s Broadway Windows Gallery, Art in General, the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Paragraph Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri and in Stadtlengsfeld, Germany where she created a permanent art installation in a former kindergarden. She was an artist-in-residence at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca, New York and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida as selected by photographer Graciela Iturbide. Her work was chosen by Sarah Hasted for Photography Now, 2004, for the Photography Quarterly, Woodstock, New York. She has received numerous grants including funding from the Puffin Foundation and two Manhattan Community Arts Fund grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has also been reviewed in the New York Times and various other publications. She lives and works in New York City.