MELISSA HUANG: @MELISSAHUANGART

Melissa, tell me about your artist story. You studied at @gsu_artdesgin didn’t you? How did you find this? Tell me about your journey to where you are now?

I’m in my third year (my thesis year!) of the MFA program in Drawing & Painting at Georgia State University. It’s been an even better experience than I imagined it would be. The faculty are incredibly supportive, my peers are hardworking and talented, and the time and space to create has been a blessing. People say an MFA is like being in a pressure cooker for 2-3 years are they are not exaggerating. GSU also offers a full tuition waiver and monthly stipend to every single accepted MFA student, which I think is a real gift to an emerging artist.

I’m originally from the Chicago area where I was lucky to grow up with access to world class museums like the Art Institute and the MCA. My family was really supportive of my interest in art and encouraged me to take as many art classes as I could. When I was in high school I would take the train downtown on the weekends to take graphic design and other classes through SAIC’s early college program.

I ended up at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY for my BFA in Fine Arts Studio. When I graduated I kicked around for four more years enjoying the cheap rent and working in as many art jobs as I could find, including at a gallery, doing art appraisal (shout out to Roz Goldman who is one of the most amazing women I have ever met and an incredible appraiser), and at the Bausch + Lomb corporate archives. On top of that I was painting whenever I could and taking advantage of as many art-related opportunities as I could. Eventually I felt like my art wasn’t really growing the way I wanted it to, and realized the opportunities I really wanted to pursue required an MFA. My husband (then fiancé) Drew and I both applied to MFA programs around the country and ended up at GSU! We both love Atlanta and could see ourselves living here long-term.

What is your studio like? Where do you like to create best? What are your artist necessities? What could you not live without?

I have a split studio situation right now! Normally I have a big, beautiful studio at Georgia State, but with quarantine I’ve been very cautious and mostly working at home in our living room. Right now I’m working small so it’s fine, but once I break out the big canvases again I’ll need to head back in to school.

I’ve been really spoiled with the home studio though, because I have 24/7 access to my cat, my husband, and snacks. I’m going to miss the amenities when I move my painting set-up back, but I love the extra space!

My artist necessities include Liquin, my two most useful round oil painting brushes (bought them in undergrad and they are now at the perfect stage of still kind of soft but also a little bit crunchy), and pthalo turquoise oil paint.

What do you listen to while you work?

I have an Art Playlist I play on loop, mostly St. Vincent, Hop Along, Mitski, and then a bunch of one-off songs I love. But a lot of the time I just work in silence. There’s something very peaceful about sitting quietly and painting, and I enjoy having the time to think.

What does an average working day look like to you?

My schedule varies a lot because of school. A typical day might look like this:
8am-10:40am: Teach a class at GSU
11am-1:30pm: Work in the Graduate Art Office
1:30pm-2:30pm: Studio time
2:30pm-5pm: Class
5pm-8pm: Studio time
8pm onward: Free time!
During the summer I have fewer classes and assistantship hours so just replace all of those hours with more painting/Animal Crossing.

Your use of colour is so interesting. Talk to me about your palette and how colour informs your work?

A lot of my palette is glitch-inspired, and comes from image manipulation in Photoshop. I like to layer and erase images, do color overlays and transparencies, and play with the saturation, hue, and contrast until I’m satisfied with the final reference. My paintings remain pretty true to my reference image, but as I’m working I’ll make adjustments as necessary and do a final evaluation at the end to see what needs to change.

Who or what are your biggest influences, and how do you find them?

Mostly painters that I find on Instagram! I keep a close eye on the New York Academy of Art IG account as I love the type of work their students make. The New American Paintings IG account has really ramped up during quarantine and I’ve found a lot of amazing painters through them too.

How do these come out in your work?

I keep a folder of images I’m inspired by, and sometimes I’ll look at them while painting to try and figure out how painters accomplish certain things (like a section of glazing or texture, or how artists develop their sense of space, things like that.)

What memorable responses have you had to your work? And which artwork would you like people to remember you for?

The Temporary Art Center exhibition (curated by Scott Ingram) was held in an enormous empty warehouse. The GSU MFA students had been given individual rooms in an attached office space to use however we wanted. I had painted my space this beautiful cool grey color inside and out and hung a selection of five glitch paintings. The warehouse was freezing, but the office space was heated. My room was right next to the door, so all of these freezing cold art viewers were walking in bundled up in big coats and scarves. I was enjoying the central heating in a spaghetti strap jumpsuit. A woman in a big red pea coat walked in, strode through the room looking at the paintings, then looked at me in my little jumpsuit and said, “You can dress like that because the heat is in your art!” That one made me smile.
I always have a soft spot for whatever is the newest! Right now I would say my little darling is a recent 20” x 16” painting “Brain Fog”.

What are you working on now?

I have a few projects just starting up:
A 48” x 72” oil painting of a glitched fashion show where I’m all of the models and every member of the audience. This one is still in a very early stage, I just have the idea and still need to photograph and edit together the reference images.

Next I’m planning on a painting of myself sitting in a fountain, having a temper tantrum, while a little cherubic stone statue of myself spits water all over my head.

I’m also getting images together for a painting where I’m nutmegging myself (don’t laugh, it’s a soccer term). I used to play soccer pretty seriously as a child and teen, and now when I get stress dreams it’s my old coach telling me I need to play one final game or let down all my teammates. Then as I play my legs do that slow dream thing where they don’t work. It’s been a stressful time, so this dream has been popping up more frequently. I just read a post on Reddit about a boyfriend getting horribly offended by his girlfriend nutmegging him in front of his friends during a pick-up game and that solidified my desire to make it a painting.

Finally, I’m learning After Effects from Drew. It’s a lot easier than Premiere for the kind of motion graphics that I’m trying to do, and I’m figuring out how I can use it in my video work.