Melissa Dunn was born and
raised in Memphis. She’s exhibited
throughout Memphis and the region, including L Ross Gallery, David Lusk Gallery,
Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Crosstown Arts, Cheekwood Museum, and the Arkansas
Arts Center. Both a teacher and arts
advocate, she teaches at Flicker Street Studio and Carpenter Art Garden and
serves on the Artist Advisory Council at ArtsMemphis, which facilitates the
individual visual artist grant ArtsAccelorator. She was selected as an Artist in Residence at
Calumet Artist Residency and has recently had her work published in the Pinch
Literary Journal. She is represented by
L Ross Gallery and will have a solo show there in March 2017.
MD: I have been wanting to explore minimalism
more. Before you came over I was reading some things I have been writing about
my practice. These systems of my studio are very similar to what they have been
in the past. I have been developing this process for 12 to 14 years now, but it’s
getting so now that I am refining it. It feels like it is finally landing.

AB: What is your source material like?
MD: My source material is wide and varied, it’s
everything from botany to fashion, to astronomy to art history to all of this
visual information in the digital, visual and printed world. Twyla Tharpe says,
“Everything is source material.” That’s
my process in a nutshell. 5 or 6 years
ago I had this blog called “Accordion File”, it was called Accordion File
because the images came from these physical accordion files that I keep. Then Instagram
happened, which is basically my ‘Accordion File’ now.
AB: So it was a process blog?
MD: Yes, exactly. This is my most current
physical accordion file, it has various images I find, things I get in the
mail….
AB: Anything that strikes you?

AB: So do you pull these images out when you
are stuck or just whenever you are working?
MD: No, this is just a constant process of
looking, if I’m jamming or if I’m stuck. If I’m stuck then I’m constantly
flipping through.
AB: This resonates with me so much because I
like to think of the process of trying to figure out a painting as a puzzle.
You have all these clues around you, you have to gather the clues and sometimes
it seems like the universe will present a clue, it’s your job as an artist
to put that together. I do the same thing except I do it digitally. I use
Evernote and drag images that I find into folders. I have hundreds of notes
just like this.
MD: I do like the digital and I do use it but I
still feel like I have to have both because I like the tactile quality. This
one right here has been in my accordion file for years. I mean I could make 10
paintings of this. Sometimes I think, “I should make 10 paintings of this, have
a show, let this be a body of work and then have another show based on some
other thread in the accordion file”, but that’s just not how I work.
AB: Yeah, things shift, you get tired of it, it
changes.
MD: Yes, things rise and fall. I am trying to
embrace my process of doing one painting or drawing one way and then doing the
next one really different. I’m trying to
not to judge myself so harshly. I mean it doesn’t fit the ‘professional
practice’ method of “do a body of work, name it, do another body of work . . .”
AB: It doesn’t work like that for everyone.

AB: So now instead of having a blog showcasing
these visuals, you put these on Instagram?
MD: Yea so now I consider my Instagram feed to
be “Accordion File”, but the thing I miss about having the blog is that I wrote
as well. I like writing about how my
source material lands, even if I’m the only person who reads it. Talking about it really makes me want to
start doing the whole studio blog again.
AB: I think that is a great idea, all of these
images are so important to how you arrive at your work.

AB: Absolutely.
MD: I feel like this painting ended up being a
portrait of my studio. I mean look at the color scheme, all the blue and
browns. It’s basically an extension of my studio, of the real physical
space.
MD: I know, I’ve been playing with that too,
how things change and what happens if you move it and push it in space.
This painting is not done, this painting is about halfway through. All these
drawing marks, I want more of that and less of the painting. I want those marks in the illusion of paint. I
put unfinished pieces up and look at them for a long time.
AB: And you also hide paintings from yourself?
AB: This dark mark at the bottom is so
strange.
MD: Yea that is something I look for in my
work, for there to be an uncomfortableness, I like there to be some dissonance.
AB: Do you consider these finished pieces?


AB: Yea it is so simple, yet so complicated, it looks like a loose drawing.

AB: Is this a bag?
MD: This is a barf bag from an airplane in the
sixties.
AB: It’s beautiful, it looks like a piece of
art.
MD: I know, industrial design has just gone down the tubes. I love stripes. I am always thinking about different kinds of stripes. I mean, truly, I could just paint stripes all the time. Agnes Martin, I bow at her alter. My new favorite tool is art center’s sign painter brush because it gets such great lines. So this is a drawing I did in 1999.
MD: The subconscious mind is a powerful thing.
I really think about that a lot and where I am on that trajectory. I think that
this is where artists can get confused is when they don’t let this process of
discovery happen. If you don’t work on the side of things, do lots of playing
in the sandbox, then making can be stifling. I feel like the Accordion File is
my research and development.
AB: You are gathering information.

AB: Again with the head.
MD: I know, I love the figure. I did some self
portraits recently because I was teaching that at Flicker Street. I have also
been categorizing collages. These are collages for paintings. It’s that
red white and blue again. This is a piece where again I got out of my comfort
zone and started using those colors you aren’t supposed to use together.
AB: I don’t think there are any rules like that
anymore.

AB: These images are great. They remind me of Amy Sillman, yet they are minimal.
MD: I love Amy Sillman. My summer vacation is
to go to the mecca of minimalism in New York – Dia Beacon. I want to absorb that courage because
minimalism is where I feel my work is going …I want to show you this.

AB: Even though it is so minimal?
MD: Well, it’s the hard edge.
AB: Is it expression and looseness that makes
you uncomfortable?
MD: It’s the mark making, I can do it but this
is the part of me that I would like to lean in harder. It is hard for me to
make expressive marks. That’s why I do things like making expressive circular
marks over and over again before making them in a painting. Another
life-long thing I’m working on, pulling drawing marks into my paintings. 

AB: That’s interesting because this is a
perfectly married image of these two, expressive marks and hard edge. Now that
you say that I see your struggle with that in all of these paintings. It seems
like you are slowly letting go of it. However, in some of your earlier
work, on your website, there are paintings that are pretty expressive and
loose.

MD: Yea and you have to be in a good frame of
mind to do that. I paint but I really think of myself as a multimedia artist
because I look and think about so many different things. I am excited to
lean into that in the coming years and wonder what my sculptures will look
like.
AB: It is exciting to be planning for that and
feel comfortable with those changes.
MD: Yea because it is not always
comfortable.
AB: Yea it won’t be. I think the most exciting
work is when you get a sense that someone is truly following their intuition
without worrying about what anybody else thinks.
MD: I know intellectually there are no rules
but I am always creating rules for myself and I am just trying to slowly, over
time, break those down and just do what I want.
AB: I feel like that’s what we are all trying
to do. However, I think it can be good to create parameters for ourselves. I
mean we have to do that to an extent, if we don’t it is so easy to quickly become
paralyzed because then your options become too limitless.
MD: It’s like you want parameters that can be
breathable and moveable and not too fixed.
MD: That’s where the idea of space comes into
my work. I want a mental space, an interior space. I do a lot of work to create
an interior space so that I can have the space to make work that is more free.
When people see my work I want them to get lost in that non-verbal place where
constriction doesn’t exist. We as artists are often asked what is your work
about.
AB: I hate that question.

AB: It’s a piece of you and your time wading
through all of these clues that you have gathered.

MD: Yea and resisting self doubt, I wonder does
the world need another pink circle on a white background? Well, it needs
mine.
AB: I think there’s something to that. When I got out of school I felt so tired of defending what my work is about because I hate that question so much. I will often avoid telling someone that I am a painter because I know that question is the next thing. I like the idea of unapologetically making formalist work.
MD: I like the idea of unapologetically making
anything.