Melanie Manos Awarded Residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Janie Paul Collegiate Lecturer and Engagement Programs Coordinator Melanie Manos will be artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in May, 2025.

Exploring themes of uncertainty, perseverance, adventure and wonder, Manos will choreograph and record segments of bodily movement corresponding to large hand-drawn landscapes via projection. In ​“The Terrain Defies the Map” she plays the female protagonist on a hero’s journey of discovery, navigating the landscape’s peculiarities and challenges, working to achieve surrealist believability that engages viewers’ impulses toward spectatorship. 

The mixed media drawings are textured with various papers including Lokta handmade card stock from Nepal, and handmade paper from Seinenryo, Shigaraki, Japan, where Manos traveled with Stamps students in the international engagement course Art for Social Change: Japan. The residency is funded through support of the Stamps School of Art & Design Lecturers Professional Development Fund.