Melinda McDaniel grew up in Florida, shaped by the visual spectacle of Walt Disney World and the light at the center of the state’s predictable weather. Her work takes an alternative approach to photography, cutting up images and sculpting with the fragments. She earned a BFA in Studio Art from Florida State University and an MFA in Photography from The Ohio State University.
Rooted in photography, her practice has expanded in recent years to include ceramics, and installation. She manipulates photographic materials to create dimensional works that extend into space, and builds ceramic figurines that merge sweetness with subversion—hybrid forms that explore dualities like tenderness and menace, humor and discomfort.
Her work has been exhibited at venues such as SPACE Gallery in Pittsburgh, the Governors Island Art Fair in New York, BRIC Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. In 2014, she received the Emerging Artist Award from the Arts Center of the Capital Region.
She lives and works in Albany, New York, where she is also an Associate Professor in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Russell Sage College.