MELISSA STERN: MEMORY, MARKINGS, THE PAST
“Back to School,” Children’s Museum of the Arts, 2003

Paul J. Karlstrom

The main theme, the need to make connection with others, to be known fully and intimately, coupled with the basic fear of rejection, is reiterated throughout the various figural images, in ceramic sculpture as well as in the drawings. Stern sees this dilemma as true for both children and adults. And the result, as she sees it, is a “doing and not doing,” showing but doing so indirectly. Working with symbols one cannot be pinned down. The invitation implicit in her work is to get to know the artist through the clues offered. But the real goal, according to Stern, is to provide effective means for viewers of her imagery to better know themselves, to recognize elements in their own pasts that help to explain who and what they have become. Stern insists that her main objective is to hang onto the past that is reified and secured through art. Through memory, she says, the desire to know oneself is fulfilled. She sees herself as a dog with a bone or rawhide who “chews, chews, chews.” Her image supplies an arresting and revealing portrait of the artist. Stern goes on to describe her images as “triggers” that create an ambience, a visual context in which memories of childhood emerge. And her stated primary goal is to transport the individual viewer into the past. For that task she has developed various strategies, a calculated approach beyond the powers of children, folk artists, or the insane, all of whom take a much more direct approach to image-making. She feels that her work is subversive in that it sets up the viewer to participate in her chosen program. She describes the process as one of gradual discovery in which the viewer, imagining he or she has “gotten it” (uncovered the meaning), discovers something else that says “stop, go back to work…look again.” Her creations are parts of a short story that the viewer then writes, completing the narrative through personal memory and experience. Perceptive viewers will understand that they have had the good fortune to encounter a generous collaborator in Melissa Stern.

Stern's intriguing art and imagery are about the “examined life” and the role of thought, reflection, and introspection as sources for meaningful creative expression. As an educated thinking person, she has integrated art-making into her life as her chosen means to understand herself in the world, to accept who she is and to realize her desire to be recognized by others. At its best, she believes her work assures us that we are not alone—that, despite the fears that beset us, child and adult alike, we are “okay” after all. She disagrees with the therapist's goal for the patient to come to terms with childhood memories, to “acknowledge and move on.” And she is outspoken in her determination not to move on. The past is to be valued; to lose it, and the feelings associated with memory, is to deny ourselves and what formed us. To understand the past is to understand oneself. That is the big idea to which these drawings are dedicated.