Melora Griffis

Peace bridge tickets come in a book with a perforated edge.  The Customs agent tears one out and she gives the officer her full attention as the script is delivered, "Citizenship?" "anything to declare?" If they believe her answers are true, she is free to enter the country.  The beauty of the bridge is the view of the water below and the arc of the drive over it.  Looking back, she recognizes fragments of herself essential to the whole.  Traversing the depths she rescues the abandoned - shame drained, a sovereign citizen exists.

-Melora Griffis

July 2021

Melora Griffis' citizen is a large 48 x 36 inch mixed media work in acrylic, digital print on fabric, glitter and thread on muslin.  The figure of a nude woman sits on the ground, knees drawn up to her chest, her gaze challenging the viewer.  Gestural brushstrokes in pinks and white break up the planes of her face, and a smattering of green glitter illuminates her hair.  Intriguingly, her body is constructed with sewn pieces of digitally printed fabric, painted over with fleshy tones - but eyes stare out from various places on her body: her side, her hip, her calf, her feet.  These fabric pieces are from the artist's archive of large paintings printed to fabric sewn to the muslin ground.  The figure's particular identity is built from these faces, a visual acknowledgement of her past: the little girl that she was and that she still carries within her adult self.  While the title of the piece gives it a universality, the expressive eyes and mouth speak of individuality.  Griffis states, "in mending disparate parts with hand stitching, the painting is vulnerable to puncture, imperfection, and wrinkles, exposing a fraught journey in the process of making, and a legitimate sovereign new land is recognized."  The background, painted in planes of vivid pink, yellow, olive green and umbery orange, creates a strong stage for this powerful work.

Frequently working across media, and creating dimensionality with pieces of fabric stitched to the painted surfaces, Griffis' work delves into memory, and she creates a compellingly complex rich psychological narrative using unconventional methodology with her choices around composition, color and materials. Her playful alliance with the metaphoric implications of form and texture invites slow contemplation, a kind of reveling in her work's powerful, off-kilter beauty.

In his ARTnews review of Griffis' solo exhibition at 571 Projects NYC, critic Doug McClemont wrote, "With their (...) dramatic use of color, Griffis' works conveyed the impression that memories and retellings can be strangely cloaked and yet, nevertheless, poignant."

Born in New York City, Griffis received her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts (Montpelier, VT). She has had solo exhibitions at the Pamela Williams Gallery (Amagansett, NY), Lizan Tops Gallery and AE Gallery (both East Hampton, NY), Whitney Art Works (Greenport, NY), The Re Institute (Millerton, NY) and 571 Projects (New York, NY). Her work has been included in group shows at Ethan Cohen Fine Art, (New York, NY) Edward Thorp Gallery (New York, NY), White Columns (New York, NY), Bowman/Bloom Gallery (New York, NY), Michael Steinberg (New York, NY), Silas Marder (Bridgehampton, NY), Ille Arts, (Amagansett, NY), Sara Nightingale Gallery, (Sag Harbor, NY) and Boltax Gallery (Shelter Island, NY) among others. Griffis has received fellowships from Le Moulin à Nef (Auvillar, France), Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus (Schwandorf, Germany), the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, (Ithaca, NY), Schloss Pluschow (Mecklenberg-Vorpommern, Germany), The Edward F. Albee Foundation (Montauk, NY) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, VA). Melora Griffis lives and works in New York City.