Rachel Melis

Fruitful and Fretful: Forty Weeks in Watercolor

Rachel Melis is an Associate Professor of Art at the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University with an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Several years ago, as a pregnant printmaker, Melis found herself beginning a series of paintings inspired by the seed pods (common fruits and vegetables) used as metaphors for human embryos. Eagerly and anxiously wanting ways to visualize the changes happening inside her, Melis used gouache watercolors and metallic inks to emphasize this tension between surface and interior. Just as pregnancy, though treated as public and definite, is personal and unpredictable, each piece shimmers with illusory transparency. The changing scale of frames circling the gallery makes the metaphor especially literal--highlighting the difficulty of trying to see the invisible and feel the future.