Melissa Thorne

Melissa Thorne is a contemporary painter living and working in upstate New York. Her practice combines elements of hard edge abstraction, craft, textile design and vernacular architecture. During her residency with Epicenter Projects, she produced a series of site-specific wall paintings inside a compound of abandoned cabins in the isolated town of Desert Center, California. Decades of occupants and squatters left behind layers of belongings in the deteriorating cabins. Thorne responded to this domestic archeology by extracting colors and patterns directly from the remnants, creating an abstract biography of the site. Each wall painting was formulated in direct relationship to the existing windows within each room. This architectural painting strategy echoes many of Thorne's previous works that investigate perceptions of illusionistic aperture. The bridge between observed experience and associative abstraction is realized within the sun-drenched framework of Desert Center. VIEW THE ONLINE EXHIBITION: Melissa Thorne - Desert Center http://epicenterprojects.com/