Michelle Sales
by Hyun Jung Kim
ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Artist Michelle Sales records personal memory on the surface of her sculptures. The artist travels and takes photographs from which she later draws inspiration. Memories are recalled and sewn together. Taking interest in phenomenon of disease and decay, she employs the use of thermoplastic fiber to develop a unique visual vocabulary. Ms. Sales is interested in producing organic surface from synthetic materials and in doing so speaks of layers of memories.

Interest in unique surface texture:
Michelle Sales aspired to become an artist ever since she was young. During her childhood, she was always interested in unique surface and texture. When she would go shopping with parents, the artist would find herself attracted to soft textiles with texture or patterns. Her mother would take young Michelle on walks in the woods so that she may also have opportunity to closely observe leaves or tree barks. Michelle would bring home tree branches, leaves, or seeds and make things. What the artist created at the time were colorful abstract paintings with rich texture, and she often used what she collected from her walks.

Expression disease and decay:
Ms. Sale’s father and brother are physicians and mother is a nurse. Growing up surrounded with medical knowledge, Michelle learned much about the mysteries of human body and its diseases. She had always been interested in the arts but was unable to pursue visual arts in college due to financial situation and enrolled, instead, in a two year program to become an x-ray technician. This is when Michelle came into contact with many patients and developed a sense of sympathy with their families. Sometime later, she developed a condition with immune system. As time passed and she recovered, she was able to gain a deeper understanding of diseases and their effects on individuals. Ms. Sales was fascinated by the fact that the disease had left its mark on her body and that this mark would make the memory of her illness more clear.

Recording memory:
Ms. Sale’s recent works explore the phenomenon of injury and decay in a stratified layers, which represent passage of time. For Michelle, sculptures are abstract records that contain personal memories and means to express freely as one does in writing a diary. The artist feels compelled to work with natural or synthetic materials particularly when they are in a state of decay. She is fascinated by man-made materials that can be manipulated to create an organic surface; the layers of surface represent accumulation of memory. Stones, firmly embedded in the sculpture, are metaphors for memories, which cannot be separated. Endless memories mimic layers of ancient civilizations built on top of each other century after century.

Michelle Sales graduated from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She was initially interested in painting but has been working in mixed media and sculpture for the past twenty-five years. Currently, she lives and works in Illinois where she teaches numerous workshops and seminars at college level. She also volunteers teaching art at a center for underprivileged women a few weeks out of the year. Ms. Sales will continue her work with heat treated synthetic fiber and dyeing technique. Her interest in the human body, especially male and female torso, continues. Future plans include building more elaborate map-like structures on the surface of her material to represent personal memory, time, place, and place.