For the third episode of the Marshall Arts podcast, I spoke to one such artist, Melody Often. An award-winning visual artist who works across a wide range of formats, from sequential illustration and portraits to murals and mixed media, Often is one of several featured artists in the “Kingdom Plantae” exhibit at Schenectady’s Bear and Bird Gallery on Jay Street.
The plant-themed exhibition arrives as spring is in full bloom around the region, so it’s fitting that our conversation touched on plenty of Earth-friendly topics along with a discussion of Often’s work, as well as her local roots.
“I went to Niskayuna High School for three years, and I think I actually did a comic contest at the Gazette here,” recalled Often, whose portfolio later grew to include a Xeric Grant-winning graphic novel, commissioned murals in Washington, D.C. and various other cities, and illustrations, portraits, and other artwork featured in galleries around the country.
“It was a very cringe comic,” she laughed. “But I was being a teenager.”
Marshall Arts podcast host Rick Marshall offers a preview of his episode 3 interview with Schenectady-based visual artist Melody Often.
Among Often’s projects featured in the Schenectady exhibit is A Jam Jar More Precious than Diamonds, a colorful, acrylic-on-canvas painting featuring a woman sitting at a table facing the viewer, surrounded by–and seemingly composed of–plant life in myriad forms. As Often explains in the episode, the project had a creative evolution that prompted some complicated feelings–and a few artistic pivots–along the way.
“I was under deadline [for the show] … but I knew I had to seize this moment,” she explained. “I already had a painting [I had previously been working on] and I painted over it. I felt guilty about it, but I had the show coming up. … One day, maybe long after I’m dead, they’ll do an episode of Antiques Roadshow and they’ll be like, ‘And then we X-rayed it, and there was this painting underneath!’”
“I knew I wanted to do this kind of classical-art, historical-style painting where you have the table that goes right up against the frame so that you feel like you’re at the table with the figure,” she said of her initial vision for Jam Jar. “And then with objects and the things around it, it becomes like a narrative painting. … There was this fun moment when I was like, ‘Geez, I don’t know if I can work at the scale she is with this garlic or this jar [on the table] … so instead, I’m just going to break the rules and I’m going to make them enormous. … I just allowed myself to put in what I wanted to see.”
Often described more of the painting’s evolution in our conversation, which also touched on some of her other work currently on display at Bear and Bird Gallery, as well as her extensive work on portraits and the unique considerations that go into depicting a human face in a particular moment.
We also discussed Schenectady’s blossoming creative community and our shared love–and arguably, obsession–with the plants in and around our homes.
You can listen to the full episode of the Marshall Arts podcast here at DailyGazette.com and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform.
Melody Often’s work can be found online at MelodyOften.Art. The “Kingdom Plantae” exhibition runs through May 26 at the Bear and Bird Gallery, located at 160 Jay Street in Schenectady.
“A Jam Jar More Precious Than Diamonds” – Art created by Schenectady-based artist Melody Often for the “Kingdom Plantae” exhibit at Bear and Bird Gallery.
“A Jam Jar More Precious than Diamonds” – Art created by Schenectady-based artist Melody Often for the “Kingdom Plantae” exhibit at Bear and Bird Gallery.
A photo of plants used by Schenectady-based artist Melody Often in her recent work for the “Kingdom Plantae” exhibit at Bear and Bird Gallery.
