Using process as metaphor, Melissa Leandro explores her composite identity and misplaced memories by translating her collages, photograms, and drawings into weaving and embroidery. These fiber techniques slow down the active mark-making of Leandro’s sketches, transforming them into a contemplative reverie. In her jacquard woven pieces, Leandro creates a material topology flattened into a single plane. A sequence of processes creates abstracted imagery that speaks to ideas of translation and our eroding memories. Similarly, through weaving and heatfusing non-traditional materials, like plastic and vinyl, elements are physically flattened into a unified textile. Using Ric Rac ribbons and spongy rug stoppers, Leandro creates a hybrid object composed of elements from the domestic environment that complicate their intended utility and refuse to conform to the neat grid of a woven structure.

Collaging both materials and processes, Leandro generates imagery through drawing and composing objects, recording their silhouettes with cyanotype, and weaving the soft bleed of blue through a gradient of weave structures. Leandro’s dreamy “weavescapes” depict the fuzzing and unraveling of remembered places.

–Natalie Spicker