Melanie Roberts
Industrial Nature
Steel, dyed resin, grass, lights
2019

I created this work to show the unbalanced relationship of nature with our industrialized world.  I added living grass into the piece to give it a sence of life and color, as well as why I included the illuminating lights behind the blue resin to represent glistening water.  I rusted the metal to give it a sense of texture in nature, like bark on a tree.  As the nature in our world is changing, so is my sculpture as one walks around it.  It shows the dominance industrialized has over our nature as there are only hints of our beautifully living nature throughout the piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melanie Roberts
It was Stolen, So She Flew Away
Drypoint
2020

This print is to represent individuals who have had something important stolen from them.  The roses and doves can be representations of love being taken away.  Doves also represent purity.  The roses could also symbolize the saying, "stole my flower," meaning their virginity has been taken.  This piece can symbolize an individual whose purity has been taken away from them, willingly or unwillingly, and it has now gone with the pure dove.  The use of the color red can represent love that has been lost or the intense feeling of something being taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melanie Roberts
Prisoner to Juvenile Crime and the Misconceptions of Society
Digital Typography, Adobe Illustrator
2020

 

Juvenile crime has been on a "sixty-three percent" decline over the last decade, but the common misconception is juvenile crime is on the rise.  This is only one of many fallacies our society has created around children who enter the juvenile system, and I have spent many hours doing outside research and interviewing an array of individuals at the Vigo County Juvenile Detention Center to learn and alter these misconceptions.  I have created repeating words or phrases within the artwork, like "untreated trauma" and "brain development" because children's brain development stops after experiencing a traumatic event.  In turn, untreated trauma can look like disruptive behaviors that present themselves as juvenile behaviors.  After asking some of the staff at the Detention Center what would be one message they would like me to share within my artwork, it was "there is still hope."  There is still a future of each child that enters into the juvenile system because one mistake or their family's corrupt past does not determine their future.

Melanie Roberts will be graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Art Education.