things my mother taught me by Nina Meledandri

things my mother taught me…17, 2021, handmade paper, organic material, metallic thread, altered photo, 8 x 8.5 inches

My love of mixed media collage is something I inherited from my mother and this series celebrates that connection as well as a shared love of plants, flowers and handiwork. One of the most important lessons that I learned from her was the value, above all, of imbuing any creative process with “spirit”.

I am always searching for a fluid transition between the recognizable and the unknown. When working with paper it is often this use of organic material, transformed when embedded in paper. The ordinary can become jewel-like or corporal or mysterious while the paper itself may morph in a multitude of ways, perhaps into a veil, or a scaffold or even a brushstroke. The resulting works then become stories of the human experience which itself weaves between the sublime and the mundane.

Nina Meledandri, a native New Yorker lives and works in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY. After graduating with a BA from Hampshire College in Film/Photo Studios, she returned to NY and became a freelance photographer, published by the NYTimes Magazine, Architectural Digest, New York Magazine and the Village Voice and others.  In the early ’90’s she taught herself oil painting and began developing her language as an abstract painter.  In 2003 she joined the David Findlay Gallery where she had two solo shows. Subsequently she has shown throughout the City in both one person and group exhibitions.

A cornerstone of Meledandri’s process is daily practice.  As a painter this takes the form of daily watercolors that she has been making since 1996 and as a photographer she has posted to three blogs each day since 2003. For the past five years, her studio practice has revolved around paper making and in 2022, Meledandri engaged in a year long daily paper making project: “The Alchemy of Paper”.  No matter her medium, her work is strongly rooted in her love of the natural world.