Melanie Alves

Hunting Season is a continuation of Melanie Alves' exploration into current social issues of gun violence and the manufacturing of a culture of fear. Through cleverly crafted sculptures, Alves draws attention to America’s focus on power, greed, and the individual, and the worry that it has lead to the loss of core human values. She translates this loss into the powerful imagery of the toy gun (the "playful" or distorted appropriation of an object of violence) as a thing of beauty and pride in the form of taxidermy, referring to these pieces as “society's trophy to itself.”