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©2008 Melissa Chandon
2007
2006
REVIEWS Artist Resurrects and Restores the Icons of Life in the U.S. in
the '50s and '60s to Their Original Luster
By
Hollis Walker Albuquerque Journal Friday, April 11, 2008
American Art Collector, April, 2008 edition page 149
- 153, Melissa Chandon Roadside America
http://www.abqjournal.com/north/venuenorth/299836venuenorth04-11-08.htm
LINK
Southwest Art Magazine, May 2008 edition,
Cover, article pages 88 - 93 112-113 by Virginia
Campbell
PRESS RELEASES
Morris Graves Museum Exhibition April and May
Link
John Natsoulas Gallery MELISSA CHANDON: LANDMARKS
December 2006
New Works
February 2006
Press Release
- Sacramento International Airport Terminal
B
PRESS - Hi Res Image
Morris Graves Installation Movie:
Link (To view the movie use your arrow key. To zoom in use the shift button.)
BOOK
Melissa Chandon
Landmarks: A Visual Essay
This publication was printed in conjunction with the exhibition "Landmarks" organized by the
Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California,
May 24 - July 1, 2007
ISBN# 1-881572-87-0
http://www.artgiftnet.com/html/general_book.html
ARTICLES
Lost In America January 3, 2007
Southwest Art Magazine: Artist to
Watch 2007
Inside the City Publications: Subtraction Adds up to Art by
Cathleen Ferraro Link
The flatlander, December 2006
University of California Davis, Richard L Nelson Gallery:
Flatlanders: A Regional Roundup 06-06-06
Southwest Art Magazine: Best of the West, June 2007 Link PDF file to article. Issue cover Link PDF file
California Art Events: Southwest Art Magazine: Images for a Bygone Era EUREKA.... Link
When Less is More: The Art of Melissa Chandon Link
by Peter London, Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. January 30, 2007
http://bluemanifesto.com/blog/?p=56
Written
by: Gussie Fauntleroy for
Southwest Art Magazine
Link
Issue Cover
PDF file to article.
PDF file of article
January 2007
Davis Enterprise: Davis artist acknowledged by national
magazine by Suzanne Munich
January 2, 2007 Link
page one
Page two
National Spotlight on Yolo's Melissa Chandon by Sally Parker
http://www.nelsongallery.info/archives/2006/06/6606.html
Varied Valley Visions
By Diane Chin Lui
"Melissa Chandon's "Ranch Tanker" depicts a tanker
located nest to a low-lying agricultural field.
Link
Thursday August 10, 2006 Davis Enterprise
Paint Your Valley
Sacramento News & Review
By
Chrisanne Beckner
9/1/2005 10:11:51 AM.
Link
Valleyscapes Paintings show the diversity of North
Valley’s regions
By Victoria Dalkey Sacramento Bee Art Correspondent Page
45 and 45
Sunday, July 24, 2005, The Sacramento Bee Sunday Ticket
“As
Hagerty rightly points out, the rural, agrarian aspect
of the Sacramento Valley is disappearing, and that gives
some of the works in the show urgency. Melissa Chandon
Snow, for example, gives us a glossy painting of a
vanishing subject, a pump house on the river, as well as
an image of the Tower Theater in Sacramento, which is an
endangered piece of our urban landscape.”
Art Pick of the Week
Plain and fancy
By
Tim White
May 20, 2004 Sacramento News and Review
"Her paintings in the show still bear her stylistic
stamp, but the compositions, and the subtle placement of
just the right colors, make the viewer want to know just
what it is about these simple paintings that makes them
so captivating. Making a solitary object interesting is
an exercise in nuance."
Sofa Chicago 2006:
http://www.sofaexpo.com/chicago/2006/loop.htm
Mediation on a Breath:
http://www.breathasart.com/
Melissa Chandon and John Weber:
http://www.natsoulas.com/html/press2.html
USUS: Paint Your Valley:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/shawg/articles/geography/sacramento/paint_your_valley.html
Southwest Art Magazine January 2006:
http://www.southwestart.com/document/435
Sanchez Art Center
http://www.sanchezartcenter.org/ARCHIVES/2006_Bicycle.html
Wayne Thiebaud, Professor of
Art Emeritus, University of California, Davis Jemima J. Harr,
Museum Director-Curator, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka,
California These compressed landscapes suggest
a place where our most interpersonal memories dwell, and
reinforce the seclusion necessary to reflect upon this feeling.
The flatness of the space requires the need to hesitate just on
the surface to echo upon the intimate setting. As in Road 31,
the warm glow from the golden field draws the viewer closer,
allowing for deep contemplation while the dark shadow in the
foreground requires one to pause prior to facing the desperate
remoteness of emotional aloneness. Chandon’s representation of the
conventional mid-20th century automobile and farm
equipment reflect her traditional deserted landscape where a
feeling of isolation persists. These vanishing subjects of
beloved rural society bolster a need to ponder the past and
create a personal connection with this rare slice of Americana.
The deep shadows amongst the warm valley sky illuminate the lone
utilitarian subject, and draw the viewer in for further
consideration and personal recollections.
Melissa Chandon’s
interpretation of the vast Sacramento Valley landscape is
extraordinary, taking on the individual need for isolation and
reflection amidst the disappearing history that is so familiar.
Blake Stimson, Ph. D, Associate Professor of Art
History, University of California, Davis
The best of Melissa Chandon's paintings
perforate the viewer with a mix of psychological unease and
sensual delight. Muller Ranch I, painted in 2005, for
example, illustrates this well. On the one hand, it offers
the beholder all the warm air, stillness, flattened
landscape and open space that can sometimes make the central
valley seem a welcome reprieve from the bustle and fog of
bay and coast. On the other, it presents us with that same
penetrating sensual pleasure--the momentary bodily
experience of a slower, simpler life--as if at a remove, as
if seen from the other side of the protective barrier of
polarizing sunglasses. This distancing gives the seductive
documentary vitality that runs through many of Chandon's
rural and agricultural paintings a pop twist, drawing us
back from our momentary salt-of-the-earth experience to more
urbane and cultured reflections. In this way her work
strikes the affective balance that characterizes any
meaningful realism: it calls up deep-seated desires with an
appeal to a world beyond our own while ever reminding us of
the world here and now out of which those desires are born.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
"She has
developed an effective synthesis of abstract and
representational elements in her works. This gives
the works an intensity and raw graphic power to behold"
Melissa Chandon’s oil paintings are
rendered with a passionate physical language that evokes a deep
feeling of isolation and loneliness amidst the welcoming
Sacramento Valley air. The intentional use of negative space via
shape and shadow create an aura of solitude and privacy to which
the viewer is slowly drawn into the environment.
Field of
interest: 20th Century and Contemporary Art, History of
Photography, Historiography and Critical Theory
Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., Chief Curator, Crocker
Art Museum
"The surfaces of Chandon's paintings make her traditional
subject matter seem contemporary. Yet, these same surfaces,
along with Chandon's moody colors, evoke a sense of
melancholy and mystery, serving as hazy veils that cloud our
memory."
ADS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
January 2007 Southwest Art Ad
May 2007 Southwest Art Ad Morris Graves Museum PDF file
Link.
Issue cover link
July 2007 Art Santa Fe An
International Contemporary Art Fair
link
Melissa Chandon Poster: http://www.artgiftnet.com/html/poster.html
For all other needs please contact the artist by sending an email: melissachandon@hotmail.com