John K. Melvin

John K. Melvin (born May 9, 1976) is a conceptual artist working with installations. His installations have been in the U.S. and France.
John Melvin was born in Oakland, California. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, and holds a Post-Baccalaurate from the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
Cloud Merced is scheduled for August 2009 at Lake Merced in San Francisco, California. This piece has been commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for their pilot program Temporary Art Projects in Natural Settings. Further information on Cloud Merced can be found on Mr. Melvin's website (see link below).
L'Aven Project was a series of twenty-nine translucent white mesh scrim panels of geometrical shapes along the path of the Aven River in Pont-Aven, France. The installation was on view to the public from July 29 to September 3, 2006. Regarding L'Aven Project, the artist states on his website that it:
:seeks to expand and collapse the viewpoints along the river, question the viewer’s place in time, memory, and physical location. ...As light and shadow define the way we see and thereby define our observed spectrum of color, the white translucent scrims will create a system of negotiation through which different perceptual effects will occur.
An exhibition of prints and other works related to L'Aven Project was sponsored by CIAC (International Center for Contemporary Art) in Pont-Aven in the summer of 2006 concurrent with the installation. L'Aven Project was reviewed by Ann Albritton in Sculpture Magazine Vol. 26 No. 7 in September 2007. In this review, she wrote:
:John K. Melvin’s The Aven Project wound upriver through the town of Pont Aven (often called the “City of Painters”) in southwest Brittany. For Melvin, his sail-like transparent scrims, which cast light and shadow on water and shore, acted as paintings. For most viewers, however, the project did not seem painterly; instead, the scrims approached architecture or sculpture, redefining space and inviting us to consider town and river in new ways. ...Melvin’s project was public art at its most engaging.
3000 Decisions is installed at the Massachusetts College of Art. It is in the southwest stairwell between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Kennedy building on the corner of Huntington Avenue and Longwood Avenue. Approximately 3,000 pieces of hand-cut, hand-welded clear plexiglas were used in its construction. Fabrication of 3000 Decisions took three months. It can be viewed during campus hours by checking with security.
Melvin was a participant in MAC 2006 in Paris, France in the fall of 2006. His work was exhibited in group shows at the Tolbooth Art Centre in Kirkcudbright, Scotland and Mack B Gallery in Sarasota, Florida in that same year.

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