Melanie Berardicelli is President and Exhibition Catalog Chair of Audubon Artists, Inc. A Continuing Education Professor at the New York Academy of Art, Melanie has been an educator in the fine arts since 2014, having taught drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history classes at the Ivy League School in Smithtown and USDAN Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

 

Melanie received a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in 2021, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts In Painting and Drawing at SUNY New Paltz in 2017. She currently assists Audrey Flack in her New York and East Hampton studios. As a studio assistant, she has helped Audrey paint and sculpt her current Post-Pop Baroque Series. Most recently, she has helped Audrey complete Star Fall, which has been on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art and at Hollis Taggart at Art Miami 2022.

 

Melanie's personal work currently focuses on the history of the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints. After reading Paul Koudounaris’ Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, she was captivated with the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints of the German-speaking countries. She admired the tireless dedication of the nuns who clothed and bejeweled the skeletal remains of Christian martyrs from 100 AD with their own rings and gems. Combining her love of anatomy and sculpture with the ornate, she hand-tailors, embroiders, and beads costume to adorn her resin-cast skeletal écorchés to recreate twenty-four-inch Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints. Through painting, she re-imagines what these saints looked like during their lifetimes, giving them back their identities and re-christening them after the heroic people that she has come to know in her life. Her graduate thesis, At The Met, conveys the spark felt when entering the space of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Influenced by the hand-painted animations of Claudia Briton, Melanie transforms motionless paintings into short animated experiences to portray the magic that can be found in a simple visit to the museum. Each interior is painted on 6”x10” paper, whereas visitors are hand-drawn on plastic sheet protectors with a sharpie. Melanie’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New York State, including The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Mutter Museum, Sotheby’s, Cryptic Gallery, Greenpoint Gallery, Upstream Gallery, The Huntington Arts Council, and The New York Academy of Art. 

 

Melanie is also children’s book illustrator. Her work for Augie Goes to the Library- a 48-page commemoration to the New Paltz community and the titular Border Collie- was published in 2016.

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