Melissa Wyman is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates interpersonal exchanges and alternative means of negotiation. Her work is often participatory and incorporates performance, video, installation, drawing, painting, martial arts, and social practice. She is an instigator, organizer, and the founder of Collaborative Combative Drawing, Rolling For The People, Roar Workshop and the Four Elements Art Series. She occasionally makes objects.

Wyman’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally at Southern Exposure Art Gallery, Root Division, Alter Space, Store Front Lab, Arts Commission Gallery and The Lab in San Francisco, CA; The Shadow Office and Oliver Arts Center in Oakland, CA; Steynberg Gallery in San Luis Obispo, CA; Error Plain 206 in Chicago, IL; Galería Espora in Santiago, Chile; The Door Gallery and the VIAF International Performance Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Roar Gallery and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Galleries in Wellington New Zealand. She held studio assistantships with Taraneh Hemami (Multi-media), San Francisco, CA; Yaeko Ogiso (Calligraphy), Nagoya, Japan; and Maurizio Bottarelli (Painting), Bologna, Italy. Residencies include Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Sedona Summer Colony, the Jail Cell Residency at Alter Space, The Studios of Key West, and she was a visiting artist at the Aguafuerte Printmaking Studio, Santiago, Chile.

She received an MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she was a recipient of the Barclay Simpson Award, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. After spending many years overseas, she now lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Manawatu region of Aotearoa (New Zealand).


*Photo above - 'Spring Play', VIAF Performance Festival hosted by Arts Sans Frontiers, Seoul, South Korea, 2009. Photo by Ryan McLay