Melina Tsalikis @melinatsalikis - Tumblr Blog

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LIMITS: Final Index

6. Text-Based Sculpture: Research #1, #2, #3

7. Text-Based Sculpture: Final I

8. Text-Based Sculpture: Final II

9. Manifesto: A Collaboration: Research #1, #2, #3

10. Manifesto: A Collaboration: Final I

11. Manifesto: A Collaboration: Final II

#art school #limitsfall2023 #final index

Manifesto: A Collaboration - final project (two)

untitled (ArtCar), Jeep Renegade, 6 books, a laundry bag, 4 pillow, canvas, clothespins, 28 PVC tubes, foam, packing tape, dog treats, plastic drop cloth, luggage covered in silicon, 4 bags of shredded paper, a glass jar, metal brackets, a lightbulb, a lantern, a lambchop toy, Grimace figure, a box of tissues, MKTMMXXIII, 30 tubes of craft paint, stickers, plastic garbage bags, 3 kinds of rope, an airfreshener, measuring cups, a roll of paper towels, a whisk, a dog seat belt, 3 beach towels, a knife, a spoon, a 10 lb bag of plaster, KN95 masks, resin, 5 comforters, bamboo sticks, thinly cut pine wood, a pair of shoes, glass inside a bucket, 2 water bottles, a lunch box, lampshades, and more, 167 x 74 x 67 inches, 2023

As MFA students who are due to graduate in May, Rebeca and I have been dealing with the question of what to do with all our art belongings once we are asked to vacate our studios. At the same time, in the last couple of years that I have been a student I have been dealing with what I call a "bad case of "Art Car", which means that my car is so full of supplies that I cannot comfortably drive myself from place to place (or offer any friends a ride to somewhere they may want to go). For this project, we decided to lean into both of these thoughts and fill my car with as much stuff from between my studio and Rebeca's. The resulting work in a delicately balanced combination of both our studio spaces, and in a way our entire identities since entering the program, reduced to the size of my car.

Although uncomfortable to confront the amount of stuff we both have accumulated these last three years (especially when it came to unloading the car and putting everything back...), I think this piece was a good exercise for us. We started to think not just about its value as an artifact from our specific experiences as art students, but also as an investigation of the art of collection/accumulation and how works of this nature can be understood by a non-art student audience.

#art school #limitsfall2023

Manifesto: A Collaboration - final project (one)

untitled (speakershelf), wood shelf, acoustic amp, and iPad, 38 x 29 inches, 2023

Rebeca and I first approached this project by comparing artistic preferences and sensibilities. We both tend to lean towards minimal interventions on found objects, so one of the first things we did was scour a handful of Goodwill stores for an object we wanted to react to. We came across two shoddily built shoe racks (no offense to the original owner/builder) and felt like we could do something interesting with them. Rebeca expressed interest in wrapping the shelves in plastic as a reference to furniture covers often used when moving. I was interested in the idea of packaging a previously discarded object that we had purchased from a donation based thrift store. When considering what to do with the shelves beyond wrapping them, I mentioned my interest in using sound as evidence of process. Rebeca suggested that we record the audio of us altering the shelves to make room for the amp that was going to be playing said audio. I liked this idea - to give the amp something to play and somewhere to sit, we had to permanently alter the thing that it would be playing and sitting on. The amp, carefully nestled between the jagged ribs of the shelves, became a thing that demanded attention in a visual and auditory sense.

For the piece as it exists currently, I do not feel any particular fondness for the plastic cover. I do appreciate the way the heated plastic clings to the edges of the shelves, but other than that I am more interested in how the amp occupies a space that was specially carved out for it; if there were to be another iteration of this work, I would focus primarily on that.

#art school #limitsfall2023

Manifesto: A Collaboration Project Mood Board - three

I often find myself unable to give my classmates and friends comfortable rides in my car, and the primary reason for that is because I have a case of "Art Car". Art Car is what I call it when my car is so full to the brim of art supplies that passengers do not fit inside (and some times, neither do I). For this work, I want to exaggerate how much art related stuff I can fit in my car by using the contents of both my and Rebeca's studios.

First image is work by Kerry Phillips

Third image is work by Thomas Hirschhorn

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Manifesto: A Collaboration Project Mood Board - two

This piece serves to complement the plastic wrapped furniture Rebeca and I will be working on while focusing in on a strategy I often employ in my own practice. I will capture the sounds of plastic (us working with it, it settling on the things we wrap, people touching it, etc.), and amplify the sound throughout the sculpture room by placing a speaker in the ceiling.

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Manifesto: A Collaboration Project Mood Board - one

Rebeca (my partner for this project) and I have similar approaches to our practices, and one of them is to use found/discarded objects. For this piece, we are going to collect an array of objects that relate to the house (furniture, lamps, etc.), and wrap them in different types of plastic. This approach abstracts the objects to solid forms, and also relates to the packaging often associated with consumerism/purchasing new things.

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Text Based Sculpture - final project (two)

my eyes are the last, grandpa's briefcase and audio of paper tearing, 12.75 x 17.5 x 3.75 inches, 2023

A couple of months ago (maybe longer), my mom tasked me with shredding documents that belonged to my grandparents. She had previously organized the papers and had determined they were all to be disposed, especially since many documents had sensitive personal information on them. After using shredded paper in my previous project, I was reminded of the errand that was waiting for me at home and I decided to incorporate the process of destorying my grandparent's documents with my approach to this second text based project. My initial idea was to shred everything like I was asked, and present the shredded paper in my grandfather's briefcase.

I gathered all the paperwork into a box and grabbed a few sheets to begin, but I also had mixed feelings about destroying things that belonged to my grandparents, especially without sorting through it first. I noticed the top layer of things belonged to my grandfather - they were programs, membership cards, and flyers from his time in a Cuban Revolution organization in Miami. I kept rifling through the papers and finding these artifacts of a life I was not aware my grandfather had, and when I got to a card that had his signature on it I started tearing up. I couldn't stomach the idea that I would be detroying the last evidence of my grandfather's existance, the last traces of him having been here. I thought about my own signature, how much time I had spent creating it, and I felt too overwhlemed to continue with my task.

my eyes are the last is an exploration of the process of destroying personal documents and the feelings that come with it. I selected papers from the pile that were not too precious and spent five minutes ripping them. My grandfather's briefcase serves as the container for a speaker, and the sound of me ripping the paper can be heard coming from within. Viewers of my work cannot see the documents I am ripping, and once destroyed no one will see these documents, and what is left is the knowledge that I was the last person to interact with these remnants of someone's life.

#art school #limitsfall2023

Text Based Sculpture - final project (one)

MKTMMXXIII, 24 soft sculpture tubes made of fabric and shredded paper, 44 x 44 inches, 2023

Our name is one of the first things we learn to read and write as a child. I remember in elementary school, my mom would label all my belongings with my name - it served a practical purpose of course, preventing my things from getting lost or confused with another student's, but it was the first instance in which things that belonged to me were explicitly marked as such. Later, in my art classes, we would be taught to sign our work, typically on the bottom right hand corner of the work for paintings or works on paper. I've tried a number of artist signatures over the years, from swooping cursive that matches the signature that I use for official documents to simply my initials and the last two digits of the year encapsulated in a square or a circle. I developed my artist signature as it is today back in 2021 during a ceramics class after getting tired of messy, smudged up handwritting on the bottom of my vessels. The easiest marks to carve into clay, and eventually I would discover to paint onto a canvas, are straight up and down strokes with minimal intersection. My initials, MKT, lend themselves to this rule fairly well, and by using Roman numerals to represent the year I could create a signature that is aesthetically cohesive and didn't fudge up the thing I was signing.

While thinking about this project, I realized that I have never signed any of my sculptures, even though plenty of artists do (Duchamp's cheeky 'R. Mutt' comes to mind, as does a collection of Rodin's bronzes). So for this project, I decided to count the up and downstrokes of my signature and break the letters and numerals down into their most basic parts. The result is my deconstructed artist signature piled up on the floor, a sculpture that literally is my signature but that still remains unsigned. The piece exists both as a declaration of my artistic authority but also a subversion of that structure.

#art school #limitsfall2023

Text-Based Sculpture Project Mood Board - three

While thinking about this project, I realized that I have never signed any of my sculptures, an integral component to claiming art as your own. I decided to count the up and downstrokes of my signature and break the letters and numerals down into their most basic parts. The result is my deconstructed artist signature.

#art school #limitsfall2023

Text-Based Sculpture Project Mood Board - two

For this project I am also thinking about name and identity, but this time turning it outward - my dad changed his name from Yiannis to John when he immigrated to America from Greece. My idea is to create candles of this Greek name and melt them down into molds that spell out his American name. The candle wax is recyclable and the names are one in the same (since they represent my dad).

#art school #limitsfall2023

Text-Based Sculpture Project Mood Board - one

Written names are obviously a form of text, but if text is the "immortalization" of a concept then written names should be considered seriously as the immortalization of a person's identity. For this piece, I'm thinking about my own name and the times where people have gotten it wrong. Repetition emphasizes my name as official text, but the (potential) title refers to the instances where my identity slips through the cracks of someone's mind.

#art school #limitsfall2023

LIMITS: Midterm Index

1. Radical Manifesto: Research #1, #2, #3

2. Radical Manifesto: Final

3. Artist Presentation

4. Radical Theory and Practice: Research #1, #2

5. Radical Theory and Practice: Final #1, #2

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Radical Theory and Practice - final project (two)

for all I'm worth (inside: sand), buckets of sand, old pool cleaning poles, two 10 lb weights, rope, ball with stars, 55 x 120 inches, 2023

My approach to this piece was a little bit different than how I usually approach my work, although its creation felt organic and I am pleased with the results. Using discarded items from my backyard and from my studio I designed a device that uses tension to hold itself upright and tightly squeeze the ball in the middle. Without the appropriate tension in the rope, the pool cleaning poles could not stand upright in the sand buckets. Without the weights being positioned just right, the rope would not be able to achieve the perfect tautness. Without any of these things, the constrictor knot around the ball in the middle would not be as impactful. This piece is a respose to the materials I have around me, but the final result is a delightful tongue in cheek representation of the feelings of anxiety I may (or may not~) have and the constant tension I'm in to maintain some semblance of a normal, healthy life. (lol)

#art school #limitsfall2023

Radical Theory and Practice - final project (one)

Merope, bamboo sticks, pine, and comforters, 80 x 52 inches, 2023

I am not sure how to talk about Merope. It looks unassuming, and perhaps a little frail, but there is so much going on behind the work and each idea affects the other.

It started as a material exploration - the old bamboo sticks are from tomato trellises my dad built to use in his garden. I reclaimed them and wove them together with strips of pine. The tension from the two materials is enough to hold the panels together, so the green fabric strips tied at odd junctions on the piece do not play a role in the work’s structure. These ribbons served the purpose of keeping the bamboo in place during the initial weaving, but now solely act as soft counterparts to the metal wires that my father used to bind two bamboo sticks together. Tension is also the force that holds up the comforters aginst the wall. The bamboo does not pierce the fabric but does hold it at a point, pinning these soft materials upright and forcing them to defy their nature of becoming a mound on the floor.

Merope is also an investigation into Greek mythology and philosophy. The work is titled after Sisyphus’ wife. Merope was a nymph who gave up her divinity to be with Sisyphus, and who helped facilitate her husband’s second escape from Death. Without her, Sisyphus would not have succeeded. Despite his wife's sacrifice and her willingness to participate in his scheme, when facing Hades and Thanatos all Sisyphus could do was talk poorly about Merope, overly chastizing her for not having given him a proper funeral. Those who are familiar with the myth of Sisyphus may not even realize he had a wife in the first place...this work is about Merope, and it is also about the forgotten women of life and literature, whose husbands stand on their shoulders only to be consigned to oblivion. The soft, floral aesthetic of the comforters alludes to domestic femininity. In fact, the very name comforter creates parallels between the typical use of the material and the way that women are expected to be the emotionally intelligent caregivers to their husbands.

The French philosopher Albert Camus writes about the Myth of Sisyphus, explaining (in short) how to be human, to experience humanity as it is truly meant to be, requires the capacity to find joy (or at the very least peace) in the absurdity of mundane and relentless tasks. The way I struggled to create this work, both in its idea state as well as actually weaving together wood, is a kind of Sisyphian task itself.

#limitsfall2023 #art school

Radical Theory and Practice Project Mood Board - two

I am sort of looking to my backyard for this piece as well, but I am mostly riffing off of a video that I worked on over the summer. For this piece, I would take the storage tubs scattered around my backyard and project video footage of me trying to talk underwater. This work would be accompanied with the audio of my underwalk talking, very likely a rumbling, semi-discernible string of words and phrases (TBD). My approach to this work is a combination of my home as subject and my interest in language and communication obstruction, as well as a the first time I am attempting a piece that I had conceptualized about a year ago (a different piece, but something focused on my vocalizations contained in various vessels [glass jars, for example]).

First image is work by Bill Viola

#art school #limitsfall2023 #Youtube

Radical Theory and Practice Project Mood Board - one

I want to continue exploring my home as my primary subject matter. I don't think that I have made a piece that has been explicitly about my backyard yet, so this would be my venture into doing so. My dad has had this "garden" in a large chunk of our backyard for about 10 years, maybe a little more. He constructed the rows for planting himself, and before he lost his mobility he would fill each row with fresh dirt and grow produce that everyone in the house (besides him) deemed too dubious to eat. He especially likes/d growing tomatoes and he would build these tipi like structures out of bamboo sticks so that the tomato vines had somewhere to cling. My intention with this work is to recreate these structures with as many sticks as are available in my back yard and leave them standing outside (between the welding area and the foundry). I may include some soft bricks/shapes that I sewed together and leave them squished underneath the legs of some of the "tripods" - if the soft shapes represent me, then perhaps the viewers can glean some symbolic meaning from the simple gesture of leaving the shapes squished underneath a contraption of my dad's design.

First image is work by Sarah Sze

Second image is work the Starn Twins

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