Melton Gallery
The Mission of The Melton Gallery is to serve as a forum to support the visual arts through diverse exhibitions and programming, creating dialog between the university and the broader artistic community.
The Melton Gallery strives for the following goals:
- Extend the knowledge of contemporary art, design practices and critical theory
- Pursue exhibitions and programming that are issue-charged in nature
- Cultivate diverse audiences to create an atmosphere of inclusion
- Develop community partnerships through collaborative projects
- Provide deliberate support of the art and design departments’ missions to prepare students to enter professional careers
Currently in the Gallery
Mo Faux
Opening Reception: 5:30 - 7:30, Thursday, April 4
Exhibit Dates: April 1 - 25
The Mo Faux exhibit includes work by Brett Kern, Tim Kowalczyk and Mitchell Spain. This team of ceramists specializes in creating clay vessels, sculptures and installations that display the illusion of different materials from plastic to cardboard to rusted metal.
Collectors of what they identify as nostalgic, banal and vintage, the Mo Faux’s are more than masters of trompe l’oeil (French for “deception of the eye”); they are archivists of objects that signify humanity. Seemingly mundane items such as a blow-up dinosaur, piece of trash or rusted car part are preserved into artwork that memorializes a narrative. It is the point when nostalgia celebrates grief, the banal is turned into poetry, and vintage remembers a time of necessity.
While completely “faux” from their original form, the pieces in this exhibit exemplify the diversity of clay-making and remind us of meaning within the signifiers of our own timeline.
Mo Faux Workshops
The Mo Faux’s will be on campus April 10 for workshops and an artist talk. These events are free and open to the public. Please join us!
Mo faux demo & workshop
9am – 12 pm & 1 – 4 pm | Art and Design Room 120
Limited seats available. Email kcohlmia1@uco.edu to reserve a spot.
Mo faux artist talk
5 – 6 pm | Melton Gallery in Art and Design
Meet Our Curator | Kyle Cohlmia
Kyle Cohlmia grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma and attended the University of Kansas from 2001-06 for undergraduate school, studying art history and Italian. After college, she moved to Denver, Colorado and worked at the Denver Art Museum for two years in the Education Department before attending graduate school in English education at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In 2010, Kyle moved back to Oklahoma to be closer to family and worked at Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City as the director of the Student Success and Opportunity Center, a tutoring center on campus. After five years at OSU, she decided to pursue her passion for the arts and completed Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition's (OVAC) Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship and served as emerging curator for OVAC’s annual art show, Momentum. She spent a year working at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Gaylord-Pickens Museum as manager of Museum Services before landing at UCO as curator of exhibitions for the Melton Gallery.
Kyle is thrilled to work with artists around the state and nation to bring in thought-provoking, contemporary art exhibits that inspire UCO students and the greater Oklahoma City metro.