On expanses of beige linen, Melissa Calderón immortalizes pockets of a neighborhood or domestic space. Combining imagery from her childhood in the Bronx with her family’s native Puerto Rico, the artist translates familiar landscapes and sights into vivid embroideries, preserving her memories in thread.
The intimate compositions capture how neighborhoods and communities change, particularly as long-time residents are displaced. Her current body of work, titled Gentrified Landscapes, explores “a place that once was but is now between the two spurts of gentrified-led divestment and revitalization and how this particularly affects the Bronx and Puerto Rico.”
Calderón embraces the potential of thread to add texture and emphasize the more conceptual elements of her work. “Villa Nueva (I’d Still be Puerto Rican even if born on the Moon),” for example, drapes soft, green chenille across the composition like a lush cluster of vines. “Prone IV | My Underemployed Life series” features a green sofa unraveling into tangled fibers that spill off the canvas.
In her studio, Calderón focuses on the meditative, entrancing process of stitching. Works begin with a drawing that’s transferred to a pattern and freehand rendered onto the linen. She enjoys the slow, methodical movements, which remind her “of times I sewed with my grandmother, making Cabbage Patch Kids clothes to sell on the playground before school started for the day. Embroidery takes me to a calm place where only the process matters.”
Currently, Calderón is working on a few commissions and preparing for a solo exhibition in Puerto Rico. She also recently began a large-scale work titled “Bodega Miles” that will stretch 40 inches wide and take more than a year to complete. You can follow her progress on Instagram.
