September 25, 2003 • THE JOURNAL

Louisville Art Gallery artist 
displays retrospective art

By Melissa Breazile

The show was half-hung last Thursday afternoon, with evidence of artist Melissa Husby’s search for the core of one thing or another leaning against walls and pillars.

She, two friends and Louisville Gallery owner Steve Sherman were, in a sense, making order of her life. Her 1990s life? North wall. More recent endeavors? Southeast corner.

The “Melissa Husby Restrospective” show—a where she’s gone, where she’s going sort of collection—opened Saturday and will run until Oct. 11.

“It’s a show that marks a culmination of a certain period of my life,” said Husby, who lives in Lincoln but has lived on both coasts and in the Southwest.

Sherman said Husby’s retrospective provides an opportunity to see museum-quality work. Hers is the gallery’s first solo show.

“We are lucky she’s in this area now,” Sherman said.

Husby novices, worry not. It’s the first time the artist has seen her work assembled like this, too.

The show is a diverse display of subject matter and media. The watercolors feature figures caught in surreal moments—one unwinds like a mummy, another pours butter-flies from its ankle.

The pastels are spontaneous, swirling abstracts. Bearing titles like “Meditations on the Red Cave,” some of these works were completed at an American Indian monument in New Mexico.

Husby’s oil work ranges from ‘illusionistic’ paintings without detail to still lives to studies to a nude series.

The artist finds a common thread in all her work.

“My focus has always been on human nature,” Husby said.

A persistence in getting at the essence of an idea or, as she put it, the “apple-ness of the apple” has driven her since childhood, when she spent hours in her room for misbehaving.

An admiration for Salvadore Dali followed Husby into adulthood, rearing its head in the surreal watercolors. But as she was completing those paintings, she realized she needed to hone her drawing skills.

“I kept falling short of where I wanted to be", Husby said.

She went on to study figure drawing and portrait painting with noted artist Anthony Ryder and Patrick Connors, respectively. She also attended graduate school at the New York Academy of Art and now teaches at University Place Art Center and from her Lincoln studio.

With her newfound knowledge of figures, Husby embarked upon her nudes series. The retrospective show features a handful of these large, expressive portraits of women over 50.

One is a proud-looking madam. Another is a bright-eyed 85-year-old who has been pushing Husby to add a tiara to her portrait. “Colleen” is grim with morning sickness, resting a hand on her pregnant belly. A healer is draped in a sari, clothed because of her belief in modesty.

To Husby’s surprise, women “were knocking down my door” to be models. Once posed, the women “just started babbling,” sharing their life stories.

“I think the greatest thing is that they trusted me with the essence of who they are," Husby said.

Friend and writer Kay Jantzen has modeled several times for Husby. One somber portrait shows her atop a drum, with a mallet in her hand. She chose the prop, a ‘mother drum’ for its power and feminine symbolism.

Jantzen said modeling fostered self-discovery as she meditated on her drum. The experience wasn’t about being nude.

Said Jantzen: "(Husby) paints not only the physical body, but the emotional body."