Where to find me and my work!

Melanie Barnett
Sep 8
3 min read

Hello hello!

It's been a bit! I've been packing up my studio and taking 5 minutes to breathe before I jump into the next thing after my year-long residency at Medalta. I've got a few things to tackle in this post, so I guess I'll start with...

Find Me Saturday, September 27th in Sydney, NS for

Lumiere 2025!

This is Your BioSuit - Collaborative Collage Workshop

A BioSuit is a fictional protective piece of clothing that is the central feature of Melanie Barnett’s worldbuilding project “it looked like your BioSuit”. BioSuits protect those who wear them from the negative effects of a changing climate. They are metaphors for ecological resiliency, for change, and for community.

Through this project, participants will become collaborators and active members of this ongoing worldbuilding project. While they collage these organisms together to build a BioSuit, participants will be asked to think about what it might feel like to wear an ecosystem, or what a BioSuit might smell like. The resulting collage will be of a BioSuit made by people using images of organisms who also call this land home.

For more info about the event, check out https://lumierecb.com/

Salt Spring National Art Prize

If you've been active on social media the last little while you'll know that I'm a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Prize! I'm so excited to share a gallery space with 52 incredible artists from across Canada.

The exhibition opens at Mahon Hall on Salt Spring Island on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025 and closes Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025. There is an awards ceremony on October 18th which will be livestreamed!

When There Were No Frogs (2025) has already made it safe and sound to the island.

Excerpt:

"When I was a child every spring the frogs in the dugouts would wake with the thaw. Their songs would echo over the flat, wet-yet-icy landscape. No ears were safe from their symphonies: even inside the house I could hear them heralding the spring.

When There Were No Frogs chronicles the armyworm infestation that ultimately led to the frogs’ demise. Pesticide use to cull the impending worms saved the canola but at the cost of the frogs. This work is the story of my first silent spring, a mouthless spring, a spring worth remembering."

Shops and Sales

I don't have an online shop, but I've had a number of people reach out to ask where they can find my little frogs and moss out in the world. I've been doing some work to have my work carried in some new stores across Canada and I'm happy to say my work is for sale at the following locations:

AAC Works - Lethbridge, AB

Medalta in the Historic Clay District - Medicine Hat, AB

Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba - Brandon, MB

Winnipeg Art Gallery/Quamajuq - Winnipeg, MB

The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery - Waterloo, ON

Ottawa Art Gallery - Ottawa, ON

*note that the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Ottawa Art Gallery have only recently begun carrying my work. Please allow some time for the shop coordinators to put the work on the shelves if they haven't done so already :)