Melissa Jane Hampson-Smith BaHons Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, United Kingdom
Sculpture,performance, installation, painting, film, craft, public festivals, large community wall spray artworks/murals, thought-provoking heirloom jewelry/wearable sculpture. Exploring themes of past,present,future,spirituality,environments on earth, medical, space travel and navigation, mining, the search for water, terraforming other planets and re-wilding parts of planet Earth,trauma,healing
Melissa Jane Hampson-Smith is an environmental fine artist, sculptor, art jeweller, tattooist, piercer and workshop facilitator. Melissa has worked with a huge spectrum of people , from one to one to large groups and communities, both online and in person. She has studied in Lancashire and Oxford where she met Yoko Ono and made works under her instruction with fellow students. Many of her sculpture works were inspired by this meeting as she moved on to Study at Brighton University. Melissa has since had a show at Jupiter Penzance giving a performance of Yoko Ono's Promise piece and showing a small retrospective of her work inspired by Yoko Ono's work. Melissa has given an online lecture on Yoko ono for the London Drawing group. And continues to be inspired by Ono's works and IMAGINE PEACE works in particular. She has exhibited and performed widely from the North West of the UK to Spain, back to Glastonbury and onto Cornwall. Creating works for both public and private collections and working with local Cornish and national groups for traditional celebrations and carnivals. Since moving to Cornwall she has exhibited internationally with Precious Collective art jewellery that has members and collectors globally. A survivor of the 2004 Tsunami Melissa's work openly deals with extreme weather, medical intervention and discarded man-made materials and spirituality. Space travel, mining asteroids, the search for water on other celestial bodies, the near future colonisation of planets and moons and re-wilding Planet Earth all inspire her works. Currently working in St Ives, Cornwall she hammers metals with beach stones, uses raw and cut gems and sets resins. Over the past few years spending more time working larger started translating works into creating large public wall art works and murals. Revisiting her interest that started in the 80's for the New York Graffitti scene, she is enjoying working bigger more often and this has helped her disabilities with Arthritis as the whole body is used to create works. Most recently creating a whole tent environment for Kernotopia Festival. Melissa is aware of and researching and working deeper on the healing benefits for people of making works in community settings and public spaces. Using the physicality of the body along with the mind and spirit to work through trauma and anxieties on a deeper level than is currently offered through just using talking therapies and medication. She draws knowledge from her own fathers suicide and her personal traumas and experience to help others see their potential through art. Melissa has spent many years experimenting with single-use plastics to create a new material she calls Future Gemstones. And has completed two art/science residencies with Mayes Creative and The Royal Astronomical Society and worked with Francesca Own using Raw Pigments in painting and has studied Barbara Hepworth in depth. Recent works studying mushrooms and the link to mental health and healing. With interest from the Wellcome Trust in purchasing works on trauma for their library. These can then be accessed by the public and galleries museums etc to use for exhibition, workshops and healing . Along with tending a real time living sculpture that is her re-wilded artist garden and studio. She has created sculptures, objet d'art and paintings for exhibition inspired by these residencies and by the past, present and future environments of Cornwall where she lives and works. Having home educated her daughter, Gaia, both her and Gaia and Melissa's mother have worked on the garden together. Melissa and Gaia have made drawings, paintings, sculpture and jewellery together from the moment her daughter could hold a crayon and paintbrush, going on to produce and curate joint exhibitions and delivered workshops together. Her daughter, now in her 20's has become an artist and musician in her own right and they continue to work together. Melissa's mother encouraged her to see stories in the abstract works that Melissa was making with there daughter. This has brought about the study of abstract art in particular, CY-Twombly and Jackson Pollock. Melissa uses abstract art, along with this practical study and immersion in nature, to bring through trauma and heal. She is a member with the Crafts Council and Precious Collective, exhibits with Ruup and Form London and Penwith Gallery St Ives, holds regular workshops and open studios in St Ives and wider Cornwall.
Artwork
Hepworth drawing study, 2022/2023
Crystal Planets , board, acrylic, graphite and glow in the dark tape. Reclaimed frame., 2023, £450
All Hepworths hard work and positivity reigns in the stars., acrylic, oil, pastel and graphite on reclaimed hardboard., 2023, £350 each
Crystal planet , eight telescopes and building a magnetosphere on mars., Acrylic, oil, graphite, glow in the dark tape., 2003, £3,500
Pigment works. Painting made with & subsequent search for more., Pigments from the Cornwall mining industry., 2021 ongoing
'Tony going back into the mine', Chalk Pastel, grey pastel made from pigment collected in Rosevale Mine, Cornwall, reclaimed frame, 2021, 200 + P&P as part of #artistsupportpledge
Heirloom Ring For Ancestor Of Queen Nefertiti (2020), Quartz donut, blue chalcedony, citrine bullet, 3x blue howlite pyramids, slab of lapis lazuli, ’Future Gemstone’ - crafted with upscaled blister packet fused with resin, neon French pastels & glow in the dark pigment, two blue goldstones, pyrites, moss agate bullet, ruby , 2020, £1500
Terraforming Mars Bracelet, Resin, vintage test tubes, seeds, reclaimed neon pastels, paper ephemera, found threads, cubic zirconias, natural bees wax, sealing wax, 2019, £2300
Musical portraits for St Ives September festival 2021, 2021
Good night painting, 2021
Womb Piece, loss of Ancestors., Metal, Plaster mod rock, Indian sari cloth., 1998
Weaving Life memorial., Found Rams Horn & Shed Deer Antler collected during conservation works., 2000
Intergalactic space jewelry to navigate the universes., Jewellery, 2019, £300 upwards
'Charcoal Brooch for Making Marks' Part of the 'Making Marks & Traces' Collection., Wearable sculpture, 2019
100 Moons, Recycled rag paper & mixed media, 2018
'Jupiter Brooch, the Sister of the Nebra Sky Disk', Wearable sculpture, 2019
Beyond the Horizon 'Dres an GORWEL le may sedh an HOWL yn MOR' , oak & Brick/Ceramic, Brass, 2022
Goddes of fire & Ocean, Found bric/ceramic, 2022
Mother and Child in Planetary motion, Acrylic, Oil and Graphite in reclaimed, hand painted frame, 2023, £800
Projects and exhibitions
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Exhibition pop up workshop studio & live events.10/06/2023 — 16/06/2023 A last minute opportunity to exhibit at the Salt House Gallery St Ives. Both myself & my daughter Gaia have been working en-plein air and in our garden studio on works here in Cornwall for the past 13 years. This was an opportunity to curate & exhibit work, have a popup studio space, shop & workshop space in the heart of St Ives artist... [Read more] |
Salthouse Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall UK | Details |
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YOKO ONO her art & legacy18/02/2023 Art installation, slide show, exhibition of archival material, sound piece on YOKO ONOs 80th Birthday. A retrospective of my works inspired by the work of Yoko Ono, meeting her, witnessing first hand a collection of her live performances & the Toilet Papers events I had the chance to work on with her. Slide show from my archive of works... [Read more] |
Jupiter Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall | Details |
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One Minute Film Festival24/09/2022 Two films made in collaboration with Gaia Hampson-Smith for the one minute film festival with CAMP membership Plymouth. Shown as a part of 40 one minute films & with live performances. https://www.camp-membership.org/camp-on-tour/ See my Vimeo for films Melissa Hampson-Smith 'Sculpture in Deep Space &Time' ... [Read more] |
Positive Lights Project, Exeter | Details |
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Ancient Materials, above & below11/10/2021 — 15/10/2021 Arts & science residency For this residency I took photos, shot film, made drawings, paintings & plan to create art-jewellery & sculpture pieces in the future. |
Mayes Creative online & in person in Cornwall Uk, St Ives, West Penwith | Details |
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Starlight residency24/05/2021 — 28/05/2021 Stars, Black Holes, Ancient Monuments in the Landscape that may align to the stars & the Milky Way. Creative responses set by artists & scientists in the group. |
Online & inperson with Mayes Creative St Ives, Cornwall UK, St Ives, west Penwith | Details |
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Dorstep Cornwall & The Anatomy of Design22/03/2021 — 01/04/2021 Art & Creatives community festival of workshops & Crit clubs. |
Online & out & About, ST Ives, Cornwall & wider Cornwall. | Details |
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Recording the ancient monuments & viatas of cornwall.01/03/2021 — ongoing En-plein air drawing & painting out in the Cornish Landscape. Recording the Ancient Monuments, Places & vistas of Cornwall that our ancestors would have experienced. To try & create a dialogue between a place then , now & for the future. |
Cornwall Uk | Details |
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Stusdy of Barbara Hepworth. Her life and ar as a sculptor and Mother.01/07/2010 — ongoing When I moved to St Ives, Cornwall with my 4 year old daughter I had no idea how Barbara Hepworth's life would continually be echoed through mine. As strained sculptor I have been extremely interested in Barbara Hepworth life and work. Little did I know when I made drawings in the hospital in Thailand, after the Tsunami of 2004, that I would... [Read more] |
St Ives Cornwall., St Ives, Cornwall, Uk | Details |