Notched legs that look like the horns of a gazelle, tusks, and seed pods: they are all painstakingly carved from wood in Asheville artist Melissa Engler’s work, evoking a sense of something wild. But co-opting forms and textures from nature isn’t Engler’s end goal. Rather, it is a sense of reverence for the spiritual quality of plants and animals that she hopes to convey in her work, along with a statement on the often destructive effect humans have on it. Her carefully observed forms, which recreate the smooth surfaces of pebbles, the intricate details of flowers or the sharp points of antlers, have a certain stillness and depth that encourages deeper reflection on human interaction with nature.
Engler grew up in Western Canada, spending a great deal of time in the vast outdoors and encouraged in creative pursuits by her father, a mountaineer and nature photographer and her mother, a painter. She moved to Hendersonville at age 11. Although she liked the area, she had itchy feet and ended up living all over the Southeast over a period of six years before returning to Western North Carolina and enrolling in UNC Asheville without a clear idea of what she wanted to do. In the art classes she took, she gravitated toward printmaking and sculpture with equal enthusiasm. She was on the verge of graduating when she had a change of heart. A friend who worked in metal had cast a table and Engler “saw the value in art that could be used as a part of everyday life.”
She enrolled in the Professional Crafts program at Haywood Community College, following the concentration in furnituremaking. “I loved being able to channel my design sense into objects that have a function.” Her work at Haywood was honored with two first place awards at The International Woodworking Fair’s “Design Emphasis Competition,” one for a desk and one for a chair. Furniture is still a mainstay of her work, and working in the Grovewood Gallery surrounds her with inspiration daily.
But for Engler, the pendulum has started to swing back toward sculpture again. “When you make studio furniture and people respond well to it, the next step is to make 12 more of the same,” she says. But after having followed that path, she found out that she doesn’t actually enjoy making the same thing twice. The call to create sculpture returned, and her most recent work includes wall pieces and other three-dimensional work with surfaces and intricate details that mimic nature.
While it was the process that first drew her to make art, it’s really something more that keeps her going, she says. Art is an outlet for expressing the values she holds close: a respect for the environment and consideration about what we’re doing to it. The animal horns and antlers represent for the artist the way in which animals that are already close to extinction are essentially dismantled for parts made into “trinkets” for people. Her latest sculptural work, which will be part of her UNC Asheville Senior show, were created under the theme of Hunted and Gathered. “They explore the line between use and abuse in our relationship with the natural world,” says Engler.
The hint of deep red seen on horns suggests blood, the spiky petals of the flowers evoke danger instead of protection. “I’m deeply interested in conservation and the sacred quality of plants and animals, and simultaneously am fascinated by the cycles of consumption and violence that are inherent in the natural world.”
Earlier this year, Engler was included in the Speaking of Species exhibition at Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, a show curated by Engler’s former UNC Asheville professor and mentor Brent Skidmore. Focused entirely on North Carolina artists working in wood, the exhibition showcased artists working in a variety of types of wood, using a range of techniques to produce both functional and sculptural pieces. “I included Melissa because she is a new maker and has a lot of territory to explore,” says Skidmore. Her leap from furniture back to sculpture, from the floor to the wall, essentially, opens up a whole world of possibility: the natural world with all its exquisite forms and harsh realities.
Melissa Engler’s work will be featured at the Studio Artists show at the Grovewood Gallery from February 8-May 10. For more information, see www.grovewood.com.