Assistant Professor Melissa Yes, had work included in the 6th southXeast contemporary art triennial exhibition in Schmidt Center Gallery and Riter Art Gallery at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Yes was also awarded a Verdant Fund grant (an expansion of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Re-granting program) to support Finches, her collaborative performance and installation project. Finches uses Harper Lee’s character, Atticus Finch, as an opening to conversations about the complicated figures—the “Finches”—in our personal and civic life. The project explores the tension created when communities are conflicted about the things they love. Anchored in the state of Alabama, Finches gathers insight about how these tensions manifest in the American South, and how they speak to the current moment in our nation. A previous presentation of Finches at the Gadsden Museum of Art was supported by 1504, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Gadsden Museum Foundation, and The Ohio State University.
Melissa Yes is an intermedia artist working primarily in video and installation art. She received the MFA from The Ohio State University in 2017, then returned to her home state of Alabama and co-founded Vinegar, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Birmingham. She is the recipient of an Alabama State Council on the Arts Media/Photography Fellowship and has received grants for research and scholarship from The Ohio State University.