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Swarthmore to Feature Two Exhibitions by Meyer in September

For Immediate Release: August 20, 2007
Contact: Marsha Nishi Mullan
610-328-8535
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news


Swarthmore to Feature Two Exhibitions
by Melissa Meyer in September


Swarthmore College will present two exhibitions and a lecture by Melissa Meyer, the 2007 Donald Jay Gordon Visiting Artist, during September. Co-curated by Andrea Packard, List Gallery director, and William Carroll, a New York City-based independent curator, the traveling exhibition "Melissa Meyer: Paintings and Works on Paper" will be on display in the List Gallery, Lang Performing Arts Center, from Wednesday, Sept. 5, through Sunday, Sept. 30.

The artist will give a public lecture about her work on Thursday, Sept. 6, at 4:30 p.m. in the Science Center, Room 101. (Please note change of location.) A reception will follow the talk in the List Gallery from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 12-5 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. An exhibition catalog accompanies the exhibition.

A companion exhibition titled "Melissa Meyer: Sketchbooks, Artist's Books, and Works on Paper" will be displayed in McCabe Library from Monday, Aug. 27, through Friday, Oct. 5. In collaboration with the List Gallery display of major paintings from different periods, the McCabe Library exhibit further elaborates the connection between her paintings and works on paper. As noted curator and critic David Cohen writes in his catalog essay "Something the visitor is bound to appreciate-thanks to the diversity of medium and scale this exhibition affords-is the sense of interdependence that permeates Melissa Meyer's work." McCabe Library hours are: through August 31, Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Saturday, Sept. 2; beginning Sept. 3, Monday-Thursday 8:15 a.m.-1 a.m., Friday 8:15 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m.-1 a.m.

Both exhibitions also highlight Ms. Meyer's high level of accomplishment during a 30-year period of creative endeavor. Her richly colored abstractions have been exhibited internationally and have won acclaim for their compositional dynamism. Swarthmore College alumnus Robert Storr, curator of the 2007 Venice Biennale and dean of the Yale School of Art, wrote in his catalog essay, "...like multi-chambered lungs taking in and expelling the scented air, [Meyer's paintings] swell and contract within their rectangular confines never losing their tautness of form, never going slack against the frame, never retreating from the pressure of the eye but always meeting that pressure with gentle, sustained pressure of their own."

Melissa Meyer was born in New York City, where she currently lives. She has had 40 one-person exhibitions and has been included in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants in painting, two New York Foundation for the Arts grants in painting, a Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, and numerous Yaddo Residency Grants. Her most recent residency was at the Liguria Study Center, part of the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy, in 2005.

Ms. Meyer's public commissions include two murals entitled Woodward Looking East, (40 x 50 feet), and Skowhegan Blue Floating World, (11 x 60 feet), for the Shiodome City Center in Tokyo, Japan; and a 60 foot-long atrium banner at the Queens Hospital Center in Queens, New York. She has taught or been artist-in-residence at varied institutions including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, The Cooper Union, New York City, and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. Since 1993, she has been a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She was also a visiting artist at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art, in London.

In 1997, the Mezzanine Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art published a facsimile entitled Sketchbooks: 1993-1995. Melissa Meyer's paintings and works on paper are included in many public and corporate collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Jewish Museum, all in New York City.

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