JOSEPH MELE prepares his new exhibit, which opens Thursday.
Courtesy photo

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Many of the pieces in Joseph Mele’s new exhibit, “Altitudinous,” have elements of collage. All are remarkable for their texture.

And all follow from the artist’s emotions.

“My work really is emotional work,” Mele said last week in describing the exhibit that opens at downtown’s Gallery 621 on Thursday.

“I use a tremendous amount of texture, including fine pumice, coarse pumice, molding paste, gesso. Then I sand, build.”

“Altitudinous” started with a painting Mele worked on for a couple of years. It sat for about a year, and when he revisited it, “I just started adding to it. It was spontaneous, I had been working on something else. Suddenly I felt very excited about it. It just came to me. I also felt that something was opening up to me. A little bit of a different direction,” he said.

“I was thinking about different names for that painting, different things,” he said. “I came up with this word, ‘altitudinous.’

“I really liked the name, I thought it sounded interesting to me. The different meanings were of course tall, but elevated, upliftng, raised, eminent, dominating — different things …”

Many of the pieces were planned by studying the space at Gallery 621. And some work from his past returned in a new way. “Maybe more of a mature way, or maybe not as obvious,” he said. “Some of them have elements of hidden figures, or different things, textures.

“I keep thinking it is interesting as an artist how things go around in circles, or come back, and then it sort of surprises me, but also it’s different,” he said. “Following my own career and process over the years, I can see that.”

Accompanying the paintings on display will be some sculptural pieces. “Since I do a lot of different things as I am working on these paintings that are related — or they may be related, the way I am working on them — there will be some surprises, sculpturally,” he said.

Mele officially joined Gallery 621 as a member in early February, but before that he participated in Arts Benicia’s Small Works show in 2011, and was a part of the show “From the Arsenal and Beyond” in December 2012, joining such local artists as Linda Grebmeier, Mike Kendall and Mary Oros.

“I love participating. I like sitting at the gallery and organizing things. When people come in, people I can engage with, that’s a great thing,” Mele said.

“People come in and say what a high-quality gallery it is, and just all of these great things. It’s exciting.”

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