Melanie Newcombe

Melanie Newcombe is an American sculptor who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Melanie grew up in Minnesota on lakes and rivers and has spent her adult life near the ocean. Water is a pervasive theme in her work and she is transfixed by the qualities of water, and her sculptures have the transcendent ability to appear as water – sometimes solid, sometimes translucent, but always reflective.

She is perpetually pushing materials toward innovative structures, with her figurative work featuring layers of aluminum screen wire sewn into human forms. The repetitive lines of the stitching connect a patchwork of wire mesh, arranged to convey a tension among beauty, sensuality, and ephemerality. She sees the layers of metal and wood as symbolic for how we as humans are also layers. Like onions we are layers. As the wire mesh, we are layers. The layers are a metaphor for her of our own layered lives.

She is particularly interested in the relationship between the gods and humans. Growing up in a family of mostly women, she understands the story of women. Her sculptures are goddesses, balancing between the sea, the sky, the earth, and the human.

Her most recent abstract pieces are an explorative dance between herself and material. These pieces are more about the process than the product because she is letting go of the trying and allowing the material to just move with her as she creates out of her intuition.

Melanie has her B.A. in Art Education from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, with an emphasis in sculpture. She continued her post-undergraduate sculpture education at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Melanie is a credentialed teacher with extensive experience teaching art to adults, children, and teens. She has been a founding art teacher for a large public high school as well as taught at several private schools. Since 2013, Melanie has been actively involved in the Los Angeles art scene as an exhibiting artist.