Melissa Zexter: From conception to creation

American textile artist Melissa Zexter combines her love of the technical aspects of photography with the more meditative process of embroidery. The results are unique, hand-crafted photographic objects that examine issues of identity, memory, personal experience and technology.

Melissa began adding embroidery to her photographs after attending an artist’s residency in New York. With no access to printed photographs there, she began sewing simple images onto hand-made paper and, later, continued to do this onto her own photographs. She revels in the contrast between the two media – and also their synergy – with the embroidery adding a three-dimensional quality to the content of the photographs.

Growing up with antique dealer parents in Rhode Island, surrounded by art, furniture, embroideries and rugs, Melissa values these influences on her appreciation of the handmade, the historic and all that is beautiful.

She now lives in Brooklyn, New York and has exhibited throughout the United States, and in Italy. She has been published in such publications as The New York Times, After Image and BUST and her red stitching majored in H&M clothing’s 2017 advertising campaign.