Mel Isidor featured artist at Prairie Underground Pop-Up
Pioneer Square Art Walk
Featured Artist: Mel Isidor
Fragments of Nostalgia
Thursday, August 6 | 5–8 PM
Prairie Underground is pleased to present Fragments of Nostalgia, a solo exhibition by Seattle-based artist Mel Isidor, during the Pioneer Square Art Walk.
Artist Statement
My practice draws from the places I’ve lived, traveled, and experienced, taking their fragments and assembling them into new forms. Collage is central to how I work because layering mirrors the layered nature of place itself and the histories and complexities embedded in our built environments. I build compositions that merge realism and abstraction to connect different moments in time and space. By weaving together imagery from my personal photography, family archives, and public records, these works retranspose familiar landscapes into forms that exist between the remembered and the imagined, a memory and a dream at once. Each piece becomes a threshold where temporal boundaries dissolve and disorient any fixed sense of when a scene belongs.
My practice draws from the places I’ve lived, traveled, and experienced, taking their fragments and assembling them into new forms. Collage is central to how I work because layering mirrors the layered nature of place itself and the histories and complexities embedded in our built environments. I build compositions that merge realism and abstraction to connect different moments in time and space. By weaving together imagery from my personal photography, family archives, and public records, these works retranspose familiar landscapes into forms that exist between the remembered and the imagined, a memory and a dream at once. Each piece becomes a threshold where temporal boundaries dissolve and disorient any fixed sense of when a scene belongs.
Drawing on my background in city planning, I treat collage as an exercise in world-building. I believe our future is built from where we have been and what we hold now. My reconstructions carry the nostalgia of memories into a vision for what’s to come, a yearning for other worlds that are possible.
Join us to meet the artist, view Fragments of Nostalgia, and explore Prairie Underground’s collection during an evening celebrating art, design, and community.
Prairie Underground Pop-Up
206 1st Ave S, Suite 130
Seattle, WA 98104
Artist Bio
Mel Isidor (b. 1995, Cambridge, MA) is a Haitian-American mixed-media artist, designer, and urban planner based in Seattle, WA. Her practice is rooted in a sustained curiosity about the built environment and how urban fabric reflects the relationship between people and culture. She leads Isidor Studio, a creative design practice at the intersection of art, design, and urbanism, which she founded in 2020.
Mel Isidor (b. 1995, Cambridge, MA) is a Haitian-American mixed-media artist, designer, and urban planner based in Seattle, WA. Her practice is rooted in a sustained curiosity about the built environment and how urban fabric reflects the relationship between people and culture. She leads Isidor Studio, a creative design practice at the intersection of art, design, and urbanism, which she founded in 2020.
Her work moves across photography, collage, printmaking, book arts, and film, spanning scales from handmade objects to large public installations and civic design projects. Her work has appeared in gallery exhibitions, public spaces, and community-centered contexts across the United States.
Mel holds a B.A. in Urban Studies with distinction as an Engaged Scholar from Brown University (2017) and a Master of City Planning from MIT (2022). She has been invited to speak on her practice at Adobe, Yale University, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her work has received support from civic and cultural institutions through awards including a CityArtist Grant from the City of Seattle, a Page Turner Fellowship from the Seattle Art Book Fair, and a Project Grant from 4Culture.
Instagram: @isidor.studio | @izi__dor
Website: melisidor.com