Melissa Dean's show "Consumed"

The idea behind Melissa’s work is appealing because it surrounds our American culture. She is interested in the amount of material goods manufactured and purchased. When visually put into a different language, the amount to which people are surrounded by mostly useless material goods is emphasized. I don’t think Melissa is criticizing the amount to which useless things are manufactured and consumed. In fact, she herself said she was most interested in this topic because she is an avid shopper herself. Upon further explanation of her work, it seems that she is simply commenting on fact that the amount of man-made goods is overwhelming. I was a little disappointed that she wasn’t too worried about showing serious issues that some of these manufactured products might cause. Although, I did like the idea of a having a “portrait” made up of products that the person circled from a Target advertisement. In this process, the composition sort of evolves on its own. The outlines of the objects are overlapped on top of one another and form density of the shape based on the consumerism of the person. The arrangements of these portraits resemble a silhouette style portrait. The pale, quaint yellow and small framing also suggests an old-fashioned portrait. This quality combined with the subject that is actually made up of makes for an unusual comparison. It seems that people are actually defined by the products they purchase.