Pit-ter-pat-ter
Melanie Elizabeth Landsittel

Artist Statement:  In making books and weaving tapestries, I am driven by my desire to express admiration for maintenance of life as magic of life. The subjects of my work are how I experience, commune with and enjoy daily quotidian upkeep. This which feels to me dismissed by the western hyper capitalism which I find myself inhabiting. I am drawn to activities like transiting (commuting – walking, taking public transportation… etc.), collecting or growing food, eating and cleaning. Each individual book or tapestry I make is a revisitation of these moments, slowly built up through repetitive labor and memorialized. 

 My work is a reflection on the textures, sounds, colors and movements of those activities, their necessity, and emotionality. My relationship with these parts of life is deeply colored by being a musician. Qualities of late-romantic-era symphonic music, and its part written for harp, such as playfulness, inspiration from and adoration for nature, sweetness, abstraction, creating repeating motifs and making variations on them, exploring their relationships over time (4/4 or 3/4 or 6/8 over twelve measures or ten pages, etc.) and space (distance between individual notes or impressions of lead type, etc.) are always inhabiting my body and coloring the way I work with material.

Each day, I am humming, skipping, dancing, narrating, slowly crafting, and playing through these materials of my labor which I hold dear.
​
Artist Bio:  Melanie Landsittel is an interdisciplinary visual and performing artist based in Lexington, KY. She is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is currently completing an MFA at University of Kentucky.