"3 Americans"

The Arnot Art Museum presents works by RISD alumni Melissa Conroy 91 PT and Stephanie Schechter 94 ID in its current "3 Americans" exhibition.

Melissa Conroy is a Textile Designer, Author/Illustrator, and a Senior Lecturer in the department of Human Centered Design at Cornell University. She holds a master's degree in Fine Art from the University of Georgia and a master's degree in Textile Design from Philadelphia University.

Conroy combines conceptual, meditative, and experiential approaches to thinking about fabrics and fashion using drawing as both preliminary inspiration and finished works along with knitted textiles. For a 2022 exhibition at Elmira College's George Waters Gallery, she said, "The drawings are an exercise in listening. I sit down, put pen to paper, and find the story along the way, carving away at the space on the page with dashes, dots, curves, or strokes until I can see what the drawing is attempting to communicate. Each knit piece explores the act of drawing in tactile form using material, textile structure, and color exploration. Simplified patterning helps to bring out the material quality of the yarns, allowing the material to speak in a way that is hopefully parallel to the brushwork, stippling, or line quality of a drawing."

Many of Conroy's drawings were created the year before her fiftieth birthday. They are reflections of her life's, decisions, and perspectives, incorporating the fluidity of watercolor and loose ink hatch marks in a way that suggests sewn fabric. The ideas and color palettes from these drawings inform Conroy's textile work.

Melissa Conroy has added aural components to some pieces, in collaboration with electronic musician Anthony Dicembre and Cornell students, her team developed textiles that activate sound experiences when stretched, crumpled, rolled -and even worn.

Stephanie Schechter is a painter known for her bold, stylized depictions of signs and architecture. A New York native, Schechter graduated from RISD, where she received a BFA in Industrial Design. Although she began her creative career as a designer, she now uses painting as a means to express the beauty she finds in the world.

Schechter finds inspiration for her work on road trips through the everyday, American landscape. Her precise, photorealistic oil paintings of signs and architecture series grew out of a love of typography and design, as well as a desire to document history. She sees her subjects as reminders of a community’s culture and history, the evolution of commerce, design and manufacturing trends, impermanence and obsolescence. She uses her “designer’s eye” to create powerful compositions that articulate the poignancy she finds in her subjects.

Schechter lives and works in Providence, RI. Her paintings have been included in numerous publications, exhibitions and collections throughout the United States. She is represented by Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts. The “3 Americans” exhibition highlights the evolution of Schechter’s work from 2015-2022.

The exhibition also features Hudson River School classical landscape paintings by the late George Wellington Waters.