Mel George is a Canberra expatriate now living in the American city of Portland, Oregon, where she resides with her glass artist husband, Jeremy Lepisto.  Mel regards her recent body of work as the physical expression of the feelings that have arisen from her geographic and cultural relocation from Australia to the United States.  The work considers domestic space and the idea of home and the memories she has of Canberra and its iconic landmarks.  “By translating common objects into glass and placing them together in simple settings, I try to distil the difficulty of finding a place for my personal past in my current surroundings.”   Mel uses kilnformed glass to generate opaque tiles or “postcards” which are icons of her experience.  As with her earlier work, these pieces draw upon quiltmaking and, like quilt patches, are layered sections that unite disparate elements.  The intimate scale of the works complements the personal nature of this collection of work.  According to Mel, the colours suggest nostalgia in her thinking about Australia, her first home, with the soft muted colours evoking a sense of memory.

Mel George completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Canberra School of Art.  After graduating, she received a grant from the Australian-American Association to travel to the United States where she worked with the Bullseye Glass Company factory assisting in their visiting artist program.  After leaving Bullseye, Mel co-founded Studio Ramp, a fabrication studio that assists artists and architects to translate their designs into glass.  She spends summers at the Pilchuck Glass school in Seattle and continues to produce independent work.