Artist Statement
I remember walking on ceilings when I was a kid. I’d lie down on my mother’s cream,
tightly-woven twill cushion, stretch my freckled legs in the air, and squint. I’d imagine being
teleported into someone else’s household. In this new house, everything was white and
clean and glistened with all the colors of the sun. All the surfaces seemed to be soft, smooth
and inviting. The space was exciting because it was new. It provided me with an escape from
a place that I called home, a structure that housed feelings of isolation, disappointment and
anger.
As a product of the socially constructed notion of the American Dream, I dream of a space
that will comfort me and make me feel at home, a structure where the perfect family resides.
In these images of houses, I find myself returning to a child’s world of endless possibilities,
but I come with the understanding that even in dreaming, we can't escape our past. At once
beautiful and unsettling, these images lie somewhere between a daydream and a nightmare,
between contemplation and melancholy, between fantasy and reality. This body of work
attempts to move through the personal to the general, projecting an intimate account of
home into the images that I create to question the fantasies in which we all live.
Biography
Megan Metté is a nationally exhibiting artist from Louisville, KY. Metté received her
BFA in Photography from the University of Louisville and an MFA in Imaging Arts from
the Rochester Institute of technology. Her work can be found both in print and online in
publications such as Don’t Take Pictures, Afterimage, Of the Afternoon, and Musicworks
magazine. She has received numerous honors and exhibitions, including a first place award
from Jennifer Blessing, photographic curator at the Guggenheim, and a prize for Creative
Photographic Concept in the 2013 Vision Art Awards at the 464 Gallery. Her series [ ] was
displayed in a solo show at CEPA Gallery in 2012. More recently, her work was featured
in the 2013 Filter Photo Festival in Chicago and the 2014 exhibition A "Womanhouse" or a
Roaming House? "A Room of One's Own" Today at A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn. Metté currently
teaches at CEPA and a number of colleges across Western New York.
You can learn more about the issue her work has been featured in here, or purchase a copy through MagCloud here.