Artist’s unique work promotes ‘kindness, respect’

By Michelle Adams-Thomas | Manor Ink

There are many artists and brilliant people around the world – too many to count. Manor Ink got the opportunity to meet one of these special humans. Derick Melander is an extraordinary creator who makes art using clothing as his main medium.

When asked why he makes art, Melander said, “From a cerebrally conscious kind of mission statement perspective, it’s really about making great art for people, art that inspires them, makes them think and moves them toward kindness, respect and fairness.”

Melander is focused and hard working, but when he’s not being creative, he’s well aware of the impact that has. “When I neglect my art practice, I get kind of weird,” he said. “Sometimes I try to turn my day job into an art project, or I turn my husband into an art project. That’s usually a miserable failure, and I drive people crazy in the process.”

Melander grew up in a very small town right outside of Malta in upstate New York. At a young age, he knew he wanted to become an artist, and in some ways was drawn into the process.

“I think I always knew. I have a really distinct memory as a child where my parents were having a cocktail party,” Melander recalled. “One of the adults came up to me and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember looking at them with contempt and saying, ‘I want to be an artist’.” He was surprised by the question – even at age seven he thought, “Isn’t it obvious that I’m going to be an artist?”

But when he was a teenager, Derick Melander gave up creating art. “Art had gotten too scary, I didn’t have a very thick skin or self esteem,” he explained. “Adults expressed their concern for me and my ability to feed and clothe myself as an artist. They started planting seeds of doubt about how I would make a living.”

Although it was difficult at times, Melander pushed through the adversity in school with determination, good support from his parents and some very deep spiritual work, and soon he felt strong enough to engage in art as a career. Within a year he went off to art school.

When asked about his artistic process, Melander explained, “Sometimes I make work for an event that is big and that will be exhibited from far away. There’s a lot of planning and strategy involved, almost like you’re going to produce a movie. I typically have a couple of weeks to make the piece, which means everything has to be worked out in advance. I work with a dozen volunteers, on site, to assemble the piece. I train them, explain the goals and show them renderings of how the piece should look.”

The clothing Melander uses in his creations is typically donated by a textile recycling company, and when the project is over, the material is returned to the waste stream. In other cases, he works more modularly, making it easier to transport and assemble the parts on site. That is how “The Witness,” his multi-sectioned artwork currently showing at CAS, was created.

What do these pieces created with cast-off garments mean? “I always go back to something one of my former art teachers said to me, which was art is about communication, and I believe that,” Melander said. “And so, when I’m creating work, and when I’m exhibiting my work, I’m always paying attention to how it will communicate, and whether people are getting what I want them to get from it, or are they at least getting something meaningful. Is it evoking an emotional response? Are they connecting and is it ultimately communicating? And that’s how I approach everything I do.”