New gallery directions
We are super excited to announce the new directions for Melhop Gallery º7077
AKA
Melhop Projects
Originally a brick-and-mortar, white cube, contemporary art space at Zephyr Cove, Lake Tahoe, the gallery has transformed into a nomadic curatorial project with a virtual online viewing and art collecting platform. Always less traditional, and by nature nimble, Director Frances Melhop has created a roving gallery with an inspired new approach to how we might think about a contemporary art gallery.
Melhop at an exhibition of her own paintings at Santa Monica Studios, Santa Monica, LA
Melhop represents 12 artists, while providing support and nurturing their careers, she also introduces experienced and fledgling collectors to fresh, diverse, conceptual, contemporary artwork not normally found in this region. The artists presented are local, national, and international, ranging from Lake Tahoe, Nevada to New York, Seoul, Kumamoto Japan, London and Moscow. Through careful research Melhop curates dynamic guerilla-style pop up exhibitions, while facilitating art installations and studio visits for people to experience art, add to their collection and meet artists in non-intimidating ways.
Mission:
to support artists, build community, collaborate with institutions, galleries, and other entities, so artists can realize projects in non-traditional spaces, that are more meaningful and relevant to their work. The benefits of not being restricted to only one space are already clear. Melhop can cast a broader geographical net, without being tied to one place, meaning -
more exposure for the artists.
The first guerilla-style pop-up is for Miya Hannan, with a show titled
Uncertain Certainty,
at an opium den in the old Chinese Herb shop in Truckee. The opium den is an intimate tiny space with a deep history. Hannan’s work activates this space.
Location: HSH Interiors
10004 SE River St
Truckee
CA 96161
Reception 11 November 4-6pm
Uncertainty 1, Soot on paper, 2020, 41” x 29” framed (image size 34.75” x 47”)
ABOUT THE WORK
Hannan writes, “each work of the “Uncertain Certainty” series is a set - a drawing and a sculpture. I found old chairs from the Reno area and sanded them down to create skeletal structures to the point that they barely stand. The chair acts as a stand in for a human portrait and the memory of being. For each chair, I made a drawing to portray the missing parts of the chair. The drawing is done with soot from a burning candle on paper suspended from the ceiling. Burning, which appears in many Japanese rituals including cremation, changes physical forms to the transient. The Law of Conservation of Mass states that mass may change forms but can neither be created nor destroyed. Similarly, the dead stay with the living in the form of memory, story, knowledge, and genetic code. Every dead person exists around us in some way, creating layers of rich histories that enhance our lives. The physical ephemerality of the soot depicts my view of death as another form of being alive.”
Miya Hannan talks about her latest 4 bodies of work under the umbrella title Reverberation
MORE GALLERY NEWS
Art Faire
Winter 2022
Original Art - everything under $1000
Through November + December 2022 Melhop Projects will be launching a curated virtual Art Faire, for Christmas and the Holiday season, consisting of original artwork by invited artists…
New work will be uploaded to the online gallery each week.
10% of sales will be donated to aid firefighters in this region through
FIRE & RESCUE HELICOPTER PROGRAM, OPERATION - SAVE THE BASIN
More news about this to come…
ARTIST NEWS
GALEN BROWN
Thank you to Kayla Anderson for her fresh new article and studio visit to Galen Brown for the Tahoe Weekly. You can find the article here
2 bodies of work by Galen Brown at his solo exhibition, Sinecere, the Nevada Museum of Art 2019/2020. Photograph by Chris Holloman
KELLY POPOFF
Popoff has been working on a new series called Take This Body, for an upcoming exhibition in Massachusetts.
Take This Body, acrylic and pastel on paper, 22 x 15 each, 2022. Kelly Popoff
JULIA SCHWADRON MARIANELLI
Schwadron Marianelli is about to release 7 new limited edition prints of her paintings, you can find them here for preorder, and is embarking on a research trip to Argentina for new work that we cant wait to see! Fresh from the studio these two paintings are ready for new homes. They will be available through our Virtual Art Faire, Fantastic Planet. Keep an eye out for their debut!
BEGIN/END (thicket), 2022. 28 x 19.5 inches, acrylic ink on top of spit bite etchings on paper. Julia Schwadron Marianelli
Lost Touch, 2022. 28 x 19.5 inches, acrylic ink on top of spit bite etchings on paper. Julia Schwadron Marianelli
JEAN BRENNAN
Brennan participated in 2 events as FRUIT&ROT:
Upstate Art Book Fair, Women’s Studio Workshop. Kingston, NY. Summer 2022
Soon is Now, Festival of climate theater, art and activism. Long Dock Park, Beacon, NY. Fall 2022
She has also been awarded a STEAMplant Initiative grant to develop and create a ‘Cookbook for a Warming Climate’ focused on color and scent.
JENNIFER GARZA-CUEN
Garza-Cuen is participating in several exhibitions, you can find more information, links to press articles and the published book below.
The Art Museum of South Texas current exhibitions invitation image
Art Museum of South Texas is showing Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg
The Art Museum of South Texas is pleased to present Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg, a photography exhibition of unique photograms created by artists Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England while at Robert Rauschenberg’s former Captiva, Florida home and studio, now run as an invitation-only artist residency. On view from October 13 through December 18, 2022, the exhibition is part of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary programing and coincides with Warhol, Johns and Stella: Revisited.
Installation view of Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg
The photograms – created by Garza-Cuen and England using expired 1970s gelatin silver paper found in Rauschenberg’s darkroom – were submerged and exposed in his swimming pool and then developed and fixed with expired chemistry. The two artists ‘activated’ the paper by piercing or slashing the bags and envelopes, using: pens, scissors, or knives; folding the silver paper at odd angles; or layering them inside the bags. Some sank to the bottom of the pool, while others floated on top or by the filtration units. Exposures were made overnight and throughout the day, allowing different levels and intensities of sunlight, moonlight, and water to penetrate the paper.
Installation view of Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg
Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund
Professor of Photography, Jennifer Garza-Cuen, is currently showing her work at the Georgia Museum of Art. Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund is on display from Saturday, Oct 08, 2022 — Sunday, Jan 08, 2023. The exhibition will then travel to 4 other major museums over the next few years.
This exhibition is the first large-scale survey of the Do Good Fund’s remarkable and sweeping collection of photography made in the South from the 1950s to the present. Since its founding in 2012, the Do Good Fund has built a museum-quality collection of photography that charts a visual narrative of the ever-changing American South. The collection includes images by more than 25 Guggenheim Fellows, five Magnum Photographers, and two Henri Cartier-Bresson Award winners, and images by lesser-known or emerging photographers from the region. In part a survey of the art and artists within Do Good’s holdings, the exhibition is more crucially a scholarly investigation of southern photography since World War II.
Reckonings and Reconstructions will travel to:
· the Chrysler Museum of Art August 11, 2023 – January 7, 2024
· the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, February 8 – May 18, 2024
· the Figge Art Museum June 15 – September 8, 2024
· Columbus Museum, in Columbus, Georgia (dates TBD)
Purchase the Book published by UGA Press HERE
Bitter Southerner feature on the exhibition HERE
So many things happening!
Happy Halloween / Samhain / Dia de Los Muertes!
Join us for Miya Hannan's reception on the 11 November "Uncertain Certainty"
and keep your eye on the website for weekly drops of original artwork by invited artists for our
Fantastic Planet virtual Art Faire 2022!!!
First drop of artwork occurs on the morning of the 1 November....shhhhhhhh