Sculpture on display

PROVO — The daughter of a puppeteer, Melanie McGee developed her love for the visual arts at a young age.

The sculptress, a graduate student at Brigham Young University, has scheduled her final exhibition at the Harris Fine Arts Center in Gallery 303 at BYU.

The show, "Touched," will be up from July 18 through July 31 with an artist reception on Friday, July 28, from 6-9 p.m.

McGee has many childhood memories of her father's profession of puppetry and storytelling and traveling to those performances with her family.

Puppet performances from all over the world gave her an appreciation for style, composition and design, she said. But it wasn't until she was in high school that she discovered her love for clay.

Later she graduated from Chico State University with a bachelor's degree in visual art and emphasis in ceramics. As a graduate student at Brigham Young University, she will soon receive an advanced degree that will allow her to teach at the university level while showing her work in galleries across the country.

She creates forms in sculpture that represent emotions with reference to biology or nature. Her style and technique has developed over the past 10 years, she said.

"As I worked on my projects I thought a lot about the importance of relationships and the feelings that I experienced when I interacted with different friends or family members. I then discovered that my expression of those feelings did not necessarily come out in words but in my artwork," she said.

Terra Nova Gallery in Provo has worked with McGee the past three years and is sponsoring her BYU exhibition.

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If you go . . .

What: "Touched" sculpture exhibit

Where: Gallery 303, Harris Fine Arts Center, BYU campus

When: July 18-30

Cost: Free