Exhibitions: Melvin Way KY

Melvin Way
Xerography
February 12 – March 28, 2020
Institute 193, Lexington

Melvin Way’s process is private and portable. He carries his drawings with him for days, weeks, or years, working on them when time or inspiration allows. He draws on found pieces of paper with ballpoint pen, often wrapping his work in Scotch tape—probably to preserve them as they are transferred among books, magazines, pockets, bags, and drawers. Way’s drawings look like copied textbook chemical formulas but do not ultimately describe any particular substance known to man.

Melvin Way: Xerography is the first exhibition to focus on the artist’s Xerographs—photocopies made using a variety of methods. Before releasing his drawings into the world, Way systematically makes copies of them. These documents serve as an informal record of his production, an inventory system, and artworks in their own right. He often further embellishes the copies with notes, writing, drawings, or diagrams explaining the origins of the original.

Melvin Way lives and works in South Carolina but has spent most of his adult and creative life in New York City. In the early 1970s, while living in Brooklyn, he joined a music group with friends, composing funk ballads and playing gigs in the city. He also experimented with drugs. To make ends meet, he worked odd jobs including a stint as a machinist before developing schizophrenia in his early 20s. His life became infinitely more complicated and Way shuffled in and out of state-run mental institutions, halfway houses, drug rehabilitation centers, homeless shelters, and the occasional correctional facility.

Way has made perhaps a few thousand drawings and Xerographs over the course of his life but many have been destroyed by the elements or worn thin by the constant shuffling back and forth among backpacks, wallets, pockets, drawers, and other hiding places. In some cases, the photocopies are the only record of a work of art.

A publication featuring Way’s Xerographs will be released in March 2020.

All images courtesy of the artist and Andrew Castrucci.