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Lise Melhorn-Boe, the eldest of three children, was born in 1955 in Noranda, Quebec, as Elisabeth Anne Melhorn. She was raised in Noranda until 1970 and Copper Cliff, Ontario from 1970 to 1973.After high school, she moved to Ottawa, Ontario, where she studied architecture and arts at Carleton University. In 1975, she moved to Guelph, Ontario to take an Honours Bachelor of Arts in printmaking. During this time, she was the volunteer director of the student gallery.
In 1977, she returned to Copper Cliff, where she worked as an Education and Extension Officer at what is now the Art Gallery of Sudbury. In 1979, she moved to Toronto, Ontario, where she worked as a salesclerk at the Picture Store for a year. In 1980, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she earned a Masters (1980-1981) and a Masters of Fine Art (1982-1984), both in fibers, at Wayne State University. In 1984, she spent the four months in Edmonton, Alberta, and then returned to Toronto. From 1984 to 1987, she worked at Letki Designs in Toronto and participated in the Ontario Arts Council's Artists in the Schools program.
In 1986, she married David Melhorn-Boe, with whom she has a son. Lise and her family moved to North Bay in 1990, where she home-schooled her son and participated in the Ontario Arts Council's Artists in Education program and The Royal Conservatory of Music's Learning Through the Arts program.
She served on the board of White Water Gallery in North Bay from 1994 to 1997 and 2002 to 2004.
Solo exhibitions of her work include: Once upon a Time (2007, Parry Sound Station Gallery, Parry Sound, Ontario), Sometimes You Have to Wake Up the Frog (2006, Orillia Museum of Art and Art History, Orillia, Ontario), Fairy Tales and Family Fables (2005, McIntosh Art Gallery, University of Western Ontario, London), Sometimes You've Got to Wake Up the Frog (2005, White Water Gallery, North Bay, Ontario), Fairy Tales and Family Fables (2003, St. Mary's College Library, Calgary, Alberta), Ghost Costumes (1999, White Water Gallery, North Bay), NOW i KNOW HOW TO BE A GOOD GiRL (1998 Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; 1998, Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury, Ontario; and 1998, Timmins Museum and Exhibition Centre, South Porcupine, Ontario), Good Girls Don't... (1995, Art Metropole, Toronto and 1995, Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario), Reading in Bed (1995, Temiskaming Art Gallery, Haileybury, Ontario), The Walls of WARC (1994, Women's Art Resource Centre, Toronto, Ontario), Domestic Dilemmas (1994, Lake Galleries, Toronto, Ontario), Reading in Bed (1993, W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery, North Bay, Ontario), Hairy Legs and High Heels (1993, Emma Ciotti Galley, Iroquois Falls, Ontario), Bound By Convention (1993, Artspace, Peterborough, Ontario, Residency and Exhibition), Women Under Cover (1992, The Gallery, Scarborough Campus, University of Toronto), and Hairy Legs and High Heels (1986, Uncommon Objects, Harbourfront, Toronto).
Lise curated Accumulation, a group show of North Bay artists, Allan Hirsh, Betty Sager and John Weiss for White Water Gallery.
She has done artist residencies at the Women's Studies Department, Queen's University (2006, Kingston), St. Mary's College (2003, Calgary) and Artspace (1993, Peterborough).
She has received the following grants: Ontario Arts Council Materials Assistance Grants (seven times between 1986 and 2006), Ontario Arts Council Artists in Education Grants (seven times between 1996 and 2006), Canada Council Project Grant (1989), Ontario Arts Council Individual Crafts Grant (1989), Ontario Arts Council Creative Artists in Schools Grant (1986-1987) and Ontario Arts Council Grants to artists (four times between 1978 and 2003).
Lise's works are in private, public and corporate collections, including the Art Gallery of Cleveland, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Institute of Chicago, Banff Centre for Fine Arts (Banff, Alberta), British Library, Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa, Ontario), California Polytechnic (San Luis Obispo, California), Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Harvard Fine Arts Library, Leicester Polytechnic (Leicester, England), Long Island University (Brooklyn, New York), Los Angeles Public Library, Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Gallery of Canada, National Library of Canada (Ottawa, Ontario), National Library of Scotland, Ontario Ministry of Government Services, Scripps College (Claremont, California), Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, British Columbia), Texas Tech University Library (Lubbock, Texas), University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta), University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta), University of California at San Diego, University of California at Irvine, University of Delaware Library, Special Collections (Newark, Delaware), Virginia Commonwealth University, Watkinson Library, Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut), and the Yale University Arts Library.
Lise is represented by Art Metropole (Toronto), bookseller Matthew Handscombe (Winnipeg), Printed Matter (New York) and Vamp and Tramp (Birmingham, Alabama).
Lise's web site can be viewed at http://www.lisemelhornboe.ca
(The biographical information featured here was written in consultation with the artist in 2006.)
Interview:
Q: What is your earliest memory of being interested in art? Are you the only artist in your family that you know of?
A: I was always drawing and making things. My mother was an artist so she made sure my sisters and I always had lots of materials to work with. She took us to art shows. I also have a cousin in Germany who painted, and my mother's mother had a cousin who painted too, although I have only ever seen one painting by my cousin and didn't meet my grandmother's cousin until I was in my late teens, so they didn't have a big influence on my decision to become an artist.
Q: Have you always wanted to be an artist?
A: I don't remember thinking about what I was going to "be" when I grew up. I guess I was too busy living my life. When I got near the end of high school, my father wanted me to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. I had absolutely no desire to be either, so I decided to apply to Carleton's School of Architecture, as I figured that was something creative but prestigious enough to satisfy him at the same time. I don't remember that there was ever any question that I would go to university. My mother had been the first person in her family to attend a university (courtesy of the Canadian Government, as she was a WW2 vet) and she got a Master's degree, which was uncommon for a woman in the 1950s. She often talked about her days at Acadia and what a great time it was. My father, on the other hand, had to leave school at 14 to apprentice in a trade, and always regretted that he hadn't had the opportunity to go further in school. He was mad keen for me and my sisters to go. Anyway, architecture wasn't really my thing, so I dropped out two weeks into the second year and switched to Arts. There was no studio art program at Carleton, so I took art history and then switched to the University of Guelph in third year.
Q: What artist(s), if any, was a big influence to you?
A: Although my mother was a painter and didn't influence my own work directly, the fact that she was incredibly supportive of my work, was a big help when I was starting off.
Q: I had private lessons with an amazing woman from South Africa named Nan Rowley when I was about nine. She introduced me to colour.
A: Judy Chicago and Joyce Wieland were big influences, "allowing" me to use materials and techniques that hadn't been acceptable in the art world before.
Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer have been inspirational in terms of using text.
Louise Bourgeois is my all-time favourite artist. I also like the work of Frieda Kahlo. Both of them have used their own lives as material for their work, which influenced me.
Q: Was there a specific person in your life that motivated you to take your art seriously? Who? How?
A: My mother. She bought work. She let me take over the house and open it up as a gallery for a show when I was in my early twenties. She paid for my studio in Toronto for two years.
Q: What inspires you when working on art?
A: Women's stories are the catalyst for my ideas. I have found my husband to be a great sounding-board when I am working out a piece in my head. Even though he is a musician who decided (was told?) as a young child that he couldn't draw and so developed an antipathy to making art, he has really good ideas.
Q: Do you find inspiration from music?
A: No. Since I am married to a musician, music is definitely a part of my life, but it doesn't affect my work.
(Interview with Kati Kirke in September, 2006).
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Lise Melhorn-Boe2006
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Lise Melhorn-Boe, History Repeats Itself: with Sarah's story (one of two views), Transformer Press2003
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Lise Melhorn-Boe, Installation instructions for Family Matters at the W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery2003
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Lise Melhorn-Boe, Flyer for White Water Gallery1996
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