Artist Statement

Melanie Mills incorporates repurposed materials and reclaimed images to explore topics regarding gender, environmental, and civil rights. She pairs visual beauty with conceptual tension, inviting viewers to consider deeper truths through juxtaposition, humor, and unexpected play on words. By building with what society discards—found objects, reclaimed images, and re-contextualized printed words, she transforms the overlooked into sharp commentary incorporating repurposed everyday objects such as yearbooks, matches, teeth, and pills.

Mills examines how the “unexpected” has become increasingly familiar – and how disruption and distortion have crept into the everyday. Through recontextualized found objects and repurposed imagery, her sculpture and collages mirror a cultural shift where the surreal has begun to feel strangely ordinary, which then impacts our perception of reality. Mills invites viewers to question anomalies, personal beliefs, and the past and present influences that define the current existence we navigate.