Photo Credit: Pearl Elsbach

Melanie Mowinski likes paper: but she also loves what goes ON paper. Paper becomes a vessel on which she prints, collages, draws, constructs, and more. She draws inspiration from the landscape of her Berkshire Hills home and residencies/travels to places like Iceland, Morocco, Tasmania, Venice, and most recently, from along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Her daily creative practice began over 20 years ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer. What began as a way to document the “toughest job she would ever love,” evolved into one of her most important artistic practices. This practice formed the foundation of “Collage Your Life”, published by Storey Publishing in 2022.

Her letterpress prints and artist books are in numerous collections, including Williams College, Yale University, Colorado College, Denison University Library, Lafayette College, The Newark Museum, Baylor University, The University of Iowa, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Ohio University, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Ruth Hughes Collection at Oberlin College, Tate Modern Museum of Art in London, Simon Fraser University, Cornell University, UCLA, USC, Emory University, Lafayette College, Library of Congress, Smithsonian American Art & Portrait Gallery Library and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

She’s taught workshops at Wells Book Arts Center, Williams College, Snow Farm, and other art centers around the world. She holds master degrees from Yale University and The University of the Arts. Mowinski is a Professor of Art at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, MA and is the founder and director of PRESS: Letterpress as a Public Art Project.

Learn more about Melanie in this podcast interview on Helen Hiebert’s Paper Talk.