Through experimentation, Melissa developed a method whereby freshly-screen-printed silk could be burned with a small torch: the dry portions of the fabric (the areas which resisted the print paste) are burned while the adjacent wet fabric resists the flame. Melissa’s use of asemic writing (“without the smallest unit of meaning”) results in evocative suggestions of a text. Below are recent works inspired by the potential of this novel and meaningful technique.
“as you lay dying, our stories rose to forever” (2020)