Melanie Steffl grew up in West Virginia and Ohio. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Contemporary Art Practice from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Drawing from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. She was the co-owner of Silver Fox Pottery in Ramsey, Ohio and has participated in the “Zona” residency in Transylvania, Romania, “Cill Rialaig” in Ballingskelligs, Ireland and was a Resident Artist at Clatsop Community College in 2004. Her work has been exhibited in a broad range of shows including “Today’s Appalachian Artists” in Cumberland, MD and “Interim” at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland.
“My goals for this residency include taking my art practice another step towards combining traditional image-making with contemporary ideology,” wrote Steffl in her AVA residency application. “This would culminate in an installation at the end of the residency based on the un/recognizable climate change at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The installation will be created with a combination of digital data and representational landscape imagery. Finally, another goal is to utilize the space as immersive and interactive, rather than as a passive object-viewing white cube.”