Jessica Mongeon and I shared our work at the Spiva Gallery at Missouri Southern State University. The show titled Cyclical Nature was up for the month of June. We gave a talk about our work that was recorded.
My work was exhibited at the University of the Ozarks, Stephens Gallery, in Clarksville Arkansas from January 17th through February 17th. I also led an encaustic workshop for their art majors. Thank you to Tammy Harrington for arranging and hanging the show and workshop!
Thank you to everyone who attended the Winter Encaustic Workshop at Wildland Gardens this December. What a wonderful time we had!
Join me for an encaustic workshop on my farm, Wildland Gardens, this December!
I continue to be incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work as a full time artist. This fall I have a new palette of colors and some amazing imagery to use as inspiration. In addition to working in the studio, I will be leading workshops both at my home and at local museums. Be sure to follow me on social media for updates!
The opening was wonderful with artists and art enthusiasts in attendance. The show will be up through May 28th. There will be a conversation with the artists on Thursday, May 19th from 6-8pm
Excited to share this new series of work with you!
Finished piece. Gouache paint, pigment print, on handmade paper with dried flowers, and encaustic on wood panel.
In process, painting with gouache paint on handmade paper.
It’s been almost a year since I stopped teaching college kids and turned to work in the studio and gardens. This spring I have two major projects. I will once again grow thousands of plants for the Spring Plant Sale in Conway, Arkansas. Plants will be sold for pick-up and shipping on our website www.wildlandgardens.org
I’m also preparing a large series of works for an upcoming show at Boswell Mourot Fine Art Gallery. Some of these works have already been sent over to the gallery. If you’re in Little Rock, go check them out. The gallery has moved to the hip SoMa neighborhood.
Hopefully this pandemic lets up soon and I will see more of your beautiful faces in 2022!
This was my second workshop for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville AR. What a great reason to travel up to this amazing museum! The participants were enthusiastic and wonderful to work with. It was a diverse group with people from many different places. I covered flower pressing and drying, encaustic medium preparation, and compositional options. We were lucky to have amazing leaf and flower specimens pre-prepared by the museums horticulralist Marina McCoy. The event was organized by Danielle Hatch and Moira Anderson.
What an honour to be interviewed by a giant stuffed beaver mascot! But really it was and this video is so dear and precious.
Like many people, this year we stayed home. As a mother of a young kid, this meant hours conducting homeschool, cleaning a messier than usual house, and having little or no time for my own pursuits. (I do have friends that juggled this all and were still productive. How?!) Over the past few months things have started to return to normal. I have studio days again and have begun a new series. It’s hard to explain the new work while it’s in process- but generally I’m working with shaped panels, handmade paper, and encaustic. I’ve been looking at images of light- fire, sunsets, reflections after the rain.
Learn more about my work and see some images in this Q and A on the Arkansas Art Scene Blog. I talk about moving to Arkansas, art, nature, papermaking and teaching.
Here is an excerpt:
AAS: You seem to have a strong connection to the land and the natural environment – and this really comes through in your art.
MCS: Since childhood I have felt a deep connection to nature. It feels like a biological or ancestral necessity for me. It’s been a challenge to develop an art practice that represents some of my experience with nature. To depict nature never seemed like enough. I remember obsessively drawing and painting the sky. But these representations never actually expressed my feeling of seeing and experiencing a dramatic sky. (I love Turner and other historic landscape paintings like the Hudson River School paintings.) There’s something about the ceaseless movement and change in nature that awes me. I love the cyclical patterns of the seasons. It was a massive moment in my development as an artist when I realized that by making paper by hand from plants I could literally and immediately include nature in my work. I didn’t know any papermakers back when I started. Now that I know many all over the country, my adoption of this medium seems like an obvious step. Now I specifically grow and collect many plants for paper including both bast fiber plants such as mulberry and hibiscus (using the stringy fibers between the bark and the inner core), and seed fibers like cotton, and leaf fibers like hosta, iris, daylily, and many others. As I mentioned, I add other items to my paper too. Large pieces of plants, old summer dresses, antique lace and hair from my horse’s tails. I love how these materials convey a sense of narrative, place, and time.
AAS: Your techniques capture beautifully the real and surreal at the same time – highly recognizable yet disorienting in a way.
MCS: The visual language of my work includes a mix of abstraction and representation. There are a lot of shifts in point of view. Sometimes my work moves more towards a chaotic abstraction and sometimes it’s easier to read. I’ve found aspects of each of the mediums I use that help create this language. I try to balance the movement of gestural paint and paper with the specificity and stillness of photography. Ultimately, I want to make work that resonates with people in emotional ways they feel are both true and hard to explain. This is also the work that I want to see. I remember tears streaming down my face while in a Munch exhibition or in front of a Rothko painting. I could never figure out why everyone wasn’t crying at these shows. I guess viewers aren't always ready to be open to artwork. In my own work, I seek a feeling that’s really hard to describe in ways that don’t sound cliche´. They are like the feeling of missing your Grandpa, or your old dog. Where you know things change and you are grateful for the present moment, but there’s some loss.
My first show at Boswell Mourot!
Here is some press: Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Art Beat
By Ellis Widner, June 9, 2019
The past and the present, processes organic and digital, manifest in the artworks of Melissa Cowper-Smith.
The multimedia artist works with photography, computers, painting, encaustic and digital printing to create images that are printed on paper she makes from the plants in her garden at her Morrilton-area home.
Initially, Cowper-Smith planted cotton for papermaking, but is also using other plants from her garden. Her thick, richly textured, irregularly bordered papers include mulberry and herbs, particularly medicinal ones as she creates works inspired by her interviews with herbalists and folk healers in Arkansas.
Cowper-Smith also is exploring pigment prints in a larger presentation -- She Let It Happen (It Wasn't Her Fault) is 55 by 42 inches. The interior scene of a living room is unsettling in its orderly center surrounded by seemingly disorderly radiance. What happened here? There is a sense of struggle, perhaps one to remember exactly what did happen.
Relief from Sorrow (star) is a visual, hopeful balm. The lovely Mom's Shirt and Heartache, a pigment print on handmade paper, encaustic and gouache paint, aches with emotion and beauty.
The exhibition will be on display at the BAAC Gallery on Main, 226 E Main St, Batesville Arkansas through April 20, 2019.
“Different Invisible Lines” with members of my critique group, Culture Shock, at the Batesville Area Arts Council Gallery in Batesville, AR. February-March 2019
Culture Shock
Culture Shock (formally the Show & Tell Art Collective) was founded in the fall of 2013. Current members include Melissa Cowper-Smith, Melissa Gill, Tammy Harrington, Dawn Holder, Holly Laws, Sandra Luckett, Rachel Trusty, Louise Halsey, Tessa Davidson and Jessica Mongeon. Past members include , Sofia V. Gonzales, Melissa Wilkinson, and Paige Dirksen. Culture Shock holds monthly critiques. During the critique one artist shares their work and receives constructive feedback from the group. In addition to fostering one another's creative work, the collective provides members with exhibition and networking opportunities.
