Mel Rosen
Mel Rosen’s drawings and ceramics respond to the fragile waterways and ecosystems near her home, where rising seas and ecological decline are constant concerns. The textures of her work emerge from these tidal environments where sea remnants are transformed into meditations on resilience and change. Untethered by time, her work carries a sense of strangeness, where historic and mythic references such as Roman pottery and protective talismans intermingle with geometric and AI-like distortions, cautioning what may become of nature under the pressures of climate change and technology.
Evoking cycles of evolution, decay, and renewal, her works may sprout appendages, parasitic growths, and embedded relics—shelved, laced, glommed, marred, or adorned—suggesting shifting states of parasitism, mutualism, and mutation. These transformations reveal how material, spiritual, and digital artifacts adapt to survive — continually reshaped by time, environment, and interpretation.
Rosen holds an MFA from Tyler/Temple and a BFA from RISD, with additional study in Rome and New Zealand. She exhibits nationally and internationally and lives in South Carolina.
Statement on Artificial Intelligence:
I approach artificial intelligence with both curiosity and critique. While it opens new creative possibilities and fast iteration, AI also raises questions around authorship, labor, and originality. I see AI as a powerful, inevitable addition to the artist’s toolbox and I use no images, styles or prompts sourced from other artists wherever I have control.
My work is a reaction to AI and insists on the presence of my personal invention and my own hand, aspiring to make meaning through personal creativity, slowness and repetition.