Melissa Furness

I am interested in the idea of travel, of our attraction to the unknown, the fragmentary, the imperfect, and the incomplete. The known turns into the unknown through the remains of physical, tangible forms in historical artifacts and ruins, which exist but remain incomplete. We flock to ruins of past ages to consider our identity in relation to time. There are roots and routes that can be drawn, documenting both our line of travel from place to place, but also our line from present to past existence. These lines move in patterns as we rise up and out of the landscape and back down again to become one with it. It is as though we are leaping ever towards some unknown, a progressive distancing from origin. This distancing is a fantasy realm of invented spaces that have only partial basis in the real.

We create our own reality by going to a different place. We may travel to an actual place, but our eyes and minds build this place into a fantasy realm as we imagine the fragmented histories that we see. We also travel virtually through the connection of the internet. An alternative identity may be taken on, an avatar turning us into "foreign bodies" which can morph in various ways as we move connect to sites. Through travel, we beco...

MFA, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2002.
Major: Painting [with Honors], Minor: Sculpture