How Great Thou Art

How Great Thou Art from Mel Day on Vimeo.

How Great Thou Art, 2006, single-channel projection with sound, TRT: 1.5 min (Installation View, Project Space, Headlands Center for the Arts)

“Six teens from YBCA’s Young Artists at Work (YAAW) program curated a dynamic exhibition of work from eleven renowned local and international artists. From the boldly iconic graphic art of Shepard Fairey to the haunting video art of Melissa Day, and the politically charged posters and silkscreens of Juan R. Fuentes to Claudia Bernardi’s “frescoes on paper,” Through Future Eyes explores the universal and transcendental experience of endurance.”

— ArtSlant San Francisco, Teens Curate “Through Future Eyes: The Endurance of Humanity”, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2009

“Radically ambivalent, Melissa Day’s works grapple with simultaneous states of faith and doubt, permanence and impermanence, knowing and not knowing. In Day’s videos, elements of landscape—hills, relentless waves, deep water—tax believers in their professions of faith, which are often sung, hummed, or whistled.  Through video, she is able to layer sound with image, exploring ideas of harmony and dissonance.  In the fusion of sound and image, a kind of half-language emerges, something in between faith and doubt, knowing and not knowing.”
— Michelle Townsend, Director of Spur Projects, 2007