Mel Day

Artist, former college athlete, co-Founder of The Wall of Song Project 
Interdisciplinary Art Lecturer, Department of Art and Art History, SJSU

Mel Day is a Bay Area multi-disciplinary artist focused on performance, community engagement, and social justice. She co-founded The Wall of Song Project, an ensemble choral and video performance dedicated, in recent years, to amplifying the voices of athletes in women’s sport who search for equity and joy. She welcomes designing site-specific, interactive performances and has worked in a wide variety of venues, including the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San José Museum of Art, San José Institute of Contemporary Art, Berkeley Art Museum, and internationally. Her honors include the Headlands Center for the Arts Alumni New Works Award and UC Berkeley Fellowship, as well as residencies with Stanford University’s Experimental Media Arts, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus (Germany), Djerassi Resident Artist Program, The Lab Residency (San Francisco) and a Guest Fellowship at Montalvo Art Center. Recently awarded the Silicon Valley Artist Laureate Nexus Award, Day holds an MFA from UC Berkeley and currently teaches at San José State University.

Wall of Song’s first “Hallelujah” project was organized by artists Mel Day and Michael Namkung. Launched on Inauguration Day, 2017 in Washington, D.C and San José Institute of Contemporary Art, hundreds were invited to sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘HALLELUJAH’ as part of a generative cycle of growing video installations and live singing performances. The work traveled widely to include over 500 live and virtual voices as part of a large-scale participatory performance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

mmd.ca / wallofsongproject.com 

E-mail: melissa.day@sjsu.edu