After earning an MFA from the University of Minnesota, Mel Griffin worked as a visiting professor at Saint John’s University. She was named Emerging Artist by both Ceramics Monthly and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, and she won the Leap Award from the Society of Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh. She was a long-term resident at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena from 2012 to 2014, and then decided to make Montana her hom. She lives and works outside Helena in the Scratchgravel Hills, an area full of prickly pear cactus, jack rabbits, and coyotes.
Griffin says, “I have faith in the natural world’s ability to fill us with a sense of wonder , to elevate our minds and spirits, and to reinvigorate our reverence for life. Making and drawing allow me to investigate fluid and profound relationships between the body, material, handmade objects, and landscape, both inside the home and out in the world. Through imagery and metaphor, line and clay, I am exploring the manner in which corporeal experience, mindfulness, memory, and the mood combine to create meaning in both everyday and imagined environments.”