Melanie Vote will be exhibiting new plein air works, studio paintings, and installation elements based on her continued exploration of the natural world, specifically, the midwestern farming plains she grew up in and returned to years later in a Ruskinian effort to memorialize and preserve their beauty. 

Fifteen odd years ago a close friend of the artist purchased a sizable expanse of Iowa prairie that had once sited a frontier homestead.  Haunting and lush, the land harkened back to Vote’s rural upbringing and rekindled a crush for all things green.  Repeated visits, morphing into a self-styled artist residency, yielded a body of work depicting overgrown fields littered with ancestral artifacts and pioneer structures overgrown by nature’s relentless reclamation.  That carefully observed foray into nature, and an attendant observation of those early settlers subject to a less than equitable relationship to nature (as opposed to present day “industry farmers”) led to a solo show at Equity Gallery titled “Nothing Ever Happened Here” in 2020.  

Subsequent to Vote’s 2020 exhibition, the prairie site came under the stewardship of the Department of Natural Resources, a federal agency conducting geological research on sustainable farming practices.  The prairie contained a large swath of Loess soil— a highly fertile silty material deposited by receding glaciers that is ideal for farming and in modern times, cash crop cultivation.  Corn, soybean and wheat all thrive in Loess soil; their cultivation has been monopolized by corporate farming enterprises that maximize profits by suppressing biodiversity with a liberal use of carcinogenic chemical fertilizers and herbicides. For Vote, whose work has long focused on celebrating the natural beauty of nature as an eternal well spring of healing, the agency’s findings re-confirmed her belief in the numinous aspects of nature, the deleterious consequences of exploiting her riches and the urgent need for informed and compassionate stewardship.

Part of the installation in Vote’s 2020 exhibition at Equity included a somber portrait of a prairie inhabitant whose life was cut short by the harsh realities of pioneer life.  Her descendant takes centerstage in “Bioluminous”.  Far from somber, Vote’s contemporary heroine emanates the grace and humble piety of generations lived in partnership with the natural world’s bewildering intelligence, present in the smallest sprout to the grandest tree. By extension, the artworks in “Light Eaters,” the latter borrowed from Zoe Schlanger’s book title, delves into themes of time, ecology, and the ephemeral, and invites viewers to contemplate our interconnectedness with nature and the enduring dialogue between humans and the plant kingdom.

Consulting with the Light EatersThis exhibition weaves together five distinct narratives to explore the porous boundary between presence and absence, and the layered simultaneity of time, and being.

Across the exhibition, the artists trace intersecting temporalities—life and death, ritual and myth, growth and decay. The title, We Were Never Here, suggests a spectral duality – a presence that is already vanishing or not yet fully arrived. Rather than following a linear narrative, the exhibition drifts through cycles and returns, where transformation is constant and nothing remains fixed.