Artist Interview with Mel Isidor

 Mel Isidor is a designer, urban planner, and mixed-media artist based between Seattle, WA, and Boston, MA. Her creative spirit stems from a fascination with the built environment—seeking to unpack how our urban fabric reflects people and culture. She also happens to be a CAM artist member. :)

Visit her artist website here and her design website, Isidor Studio, here.

Mel was interviewed Whitney Bashaw common AREA maintenance on September 9, 2025. Edited for clarity.

How long have you been in Seattle? And what brought you here?

I moved here in January 2024, so it's been over a year and a half now, I guess almost two years. I've been in Boston and around the East Coast pretty much my whole life, although I've done some stints abroad. But I was craving a new environment that would expose me to some new things. And fortunately, I have my studio practice that allowed me to be anywhere.

Seattle came on the map for a number of reasons. I had a lot of friends here but also my mom lived here in the late 70s and early 80s and she was a big outdoors person, and I felt like I was craving to be in a slower paced city that was more nature oriented. I'm calling this my nature era. And then I think also Seattle is quite interesting from an urbanist perspective, since my whole background is city planning. I think that we're doing a lot of experimental and creative things in terms of how the city is developing.

I'm curious what you mean by experimental parts of the city. I'm from the East Coast, too, and I’m always thinking about those differences.

Seattle is part of a broader network of cities that have been doing redevelopment of previous highways and the whole waterfront development is pretty spectacular. And I would say one of the more significant pieces of civic infrastructure in the country and being here to witness its opening and seeing how it transforms a place like downtown, I think is pretty great. Prior to me being here, I was doing a project with the city of Boston, and they're planning department, and a lot of it looked at different housing typologies. So I think Seattle had a lot of housing development and typologies that Boston aspires to have.

Boston is very steeped in historical context that preserved a level of character of the city, but also prevented a lot of development, which is actively causing a major housing crisis, which is part of the reason I left.

But I would say there are some challenges with the city [Seattle] in terms of its identity. When I first came here, I was talking to some folks in the historic preservation spaces, and there's not really a historic legacy that the city clings to compared to the East Coast. So I think that sometimes there's an easy writing over of what was and there's less protections around things that maybe have historic significance.

And then, I think just this is sort of baked into the city, but just how the park infrastructure is, so, so lovely and the wide sidewalks!

Your arts, consulting, and ethnographic research are enmeshed. What came first? Was it art, an interest in cities? And how do these things work together to inform your practice?

Yeah, I'd say the art preceded everything. My mom was an artist and graphic designer. There was a period where I thought I was original [laughs]. And then I was like, I actually just did the same thing as my mom did. I was working across a lot of different mediums, even as a kid. My mom put me in different art classes and that developed my curiosity and cultivated an engagement with art and creative things. I wrote a ten year plan in eighth grade that I was gonna be an architect, and I had this whole timeline. I looked back on it recently, and I'm actually not that far off. I think it was a curiosity around design, buildings and infrastructure. 

I started going on bike rides in high school and I’d take photos of buildings. At the time, I didn't have a phone or GPS, so photography became a tool of navigation so I could get home. It was my way of exploring and documenting where I was. That curiosity spurred the urbanist lens combined with art. So I'd say the photography was the practice that developed combined with graphic design. I had taught myself Photoshop in either middle school or high school. I spent my angsty teen years doing all those things and developed some of those creative practices. And at the time, I remember my mom was complaining about me spending all the time on the internet and it's kind of funny looking back now, I have a whole business because I was spending all that time on the internet. 

Then when I applied to undergrad, I actually did apply to architecture schools, but I also was doing track and field, and getting recruited but every single time I talked to a coach about wanting to do architecture and track, they said, “you can't do that,” because apparently you’re in studio all the time and sleep deprived so these two things don't coexist. Well I ended up getting recruited for Brown and they didn't have architecture. So I was like, wow, this is just a good school anyways, right? I should just go here. And they had urban studies, which I actually feel like was better, because it's architecture before you get down in the weeds.

I developed my practice a lot in that time because I took classes from the fine art department every semester, always kind of integrating my studies with art.

In your collage work, the way it builds on itself feels like a city, or like a forest, there’s an over-story and an understory and all of these little in betweens, it feels so integrated like a beautiful chaos.

Yeah, that's kind of the goal with all of it. I want to create these landscapes. And it's not always cities, but it's still informed by that composition of this sort of landscape. But especially when I am doing cityscapes, I feel like the architecture is something that I'm always drawn to.

A lot of times the building is the first thing that I'm choosing, whatever the composition is, and then I'll build the whole landscape around that. That's why I love collage and the designs that I make. It's all still rooted in my practice from when I was younger, when I was biking or walking around taking photos. I still use my original photography for all of that stuff that I do. And it is kind of like capturing a recollection of experiences in spaces, but also transcribing them in a whole different format. That's a bit abstracted, a bit chaotic, but I feel like it also captures the essence of what a place is in a way where I think I was feeling. There was a period in which I was feeling a limitation from just still photography, in terms of capturing what I was feeling in a city, and just like how dynamic and alive they are. And that's kind of how I veered to collage. I feel like it took on a whole other life. The photos make it tangible in a way where people can actually see and recognize elements, but also the composition breaks that apart to the point where it's not so literal. So there is this element of resonating with this experience, but also it feels like another world apart from this experience.

Can you break it down your consulting work and explain to me like I'm five and what’s looked like for you in Seattle?

I often use collage as a way to articulate urban planning concepts. For projects, it's important to communicate what visions are to the public. And collage has been used as a way to create visuals that are grasping people's attention and also spark moments of conversation.

Locally, I was a sub consultant to Seva Workshop, a planning firm working with the city to create a plan to steer the future development of the Northgate neighborhood. I created a collage that used for photos taken by another local photographer. So I've done stuff like that in Seattle, but also, in Boston specifically, I had done a project where I was walking around all the different neighborhoods and creating collages to articulate the neighborhood character and vernacular. 

I am working with this organization in New Orleans called Broad Community Connections, and they're doing a campaign on environmental infrastructure to mitigate climate changes, primarily flooding challenges in the city. The collage weaves in elements of the city's infrastructure, such as retaining walls and rain catchment systems, while also showing the community how these elements demonstrate character and create a place that feels alive. As these infrastructure elements become more ingrained in the urban landscape, they contribute to the collage's overall composition. The collage is now displayed on a billboard, which I’m excited to see soon.

  Maybe this is just a part of ethnographic research in general, but it seems that you really maintain ideas of collage and community at the forefront and how you think about cities and, and collage kind of works in that way where you are dreaming. 

So I think the collage is an element of my creative style that gets woven into things. I'd say another large portion, actually, the foundation of my practice has been report publication design. I work with a lot of organizations, primarily focusing on policy planning, research-based initiatives. But a lot of times I have used the collage style as something that gets woven into the graphics materials for those, depending on the context. I enjoy that type of work because it's very research focused but it is aligned with research organizations and policymakers. So it actually is creating visuals that are being used to inform policy decisions. I work for this one organization, the Boston Foundation, where I've been to a couple of their launches earlier this year. And, it's like on a Wednesday morning, there's 90 people in the room and actual government officials in the room. And I was like, “oh, this is great because people are actually paying attention to this. I don't know, oftentimes I just work  online and I submit the document and I get paid, and it’s hard to see the scale of impact unless I show up for events or releases in person. And for me as someone interested in planning and development, that's an area of my practice where I'm constantly gaining new information and I'm essentially being paid to learn things. And then the collage is the more artistic style that I weave in where appropriate.

Those are sort of the two arms. And then I also, I'm doing more, signage based, things that are showing up in real life. Billboard work is a new part of my practice, and I have one up in New Orleans as mentioned. It's only my second billboard ever, and I'm excited to see my work scale to this level. Also, I've done some exhibition design and I'm currently doing some historic signage design projects where I'm both researching, but also designing, the panels for a Historic District in Atlanta. A lot of it is just a curiosity around people, place, culture, and identity and like how space is developing and all of the projects are motivated by those curiosities.

It seems like the work you do is very centered in community voices and really ensuring that that is a part of any kind of futurity. It feels like, oh, what could development and growth look like if displacement was not a part of it. I don't know your relationship to the concept of gentrification, but I wonder how that relates to the work you do or how you think about your design in terms of that. 

I think it's an important question. I think that's why I am excited to be engaged in the more tactical strategy, planning and policy side and, you know, some of it gets bogged down in politics. And maybe it's not always the most experimental  design, but I am very much of the belief that there needs to be actual strategies, policies and practices in order to have the future that we envision. And I'm very much someone who loves processes and thinking about how processes inform what our imaginations become. 

There's something that's deeply fulfilling about doing the work where you actually feel like it's impacting what decisions are being made that are going to impact a broad swath of people. That’s something that motivates me greatly, and even in my urban planning background, a lot of that's rooted in this idea of trying to bring community voice into what we're developing for the future, but also being practical about the infrastructure that we exist in.

So much of the work that I've done, and any type of planning project, has involved community engagement practices. That's something I'm always thinking about, even in my artistic practice. It's just thinking about how and which voices come through in terms of narratives, which I think is always valuable. And I think it creates a reinforcing dialog of any type of work itself. Like the billboard, it’s focused on empowering community members to just go for it. So it is an artistic element to actually drive real action. 

I worked as a journalist in a small town and I think so often you don't see creative approaches to engaging the public. And then things are “publicly accessible” but what does that actually mean? So it's really refreshing to see someone like you who takes a very creative approaches with thoughtfulness.

in planning projects, there's so much potential for community engagement. Sometimes, though, there's a lack of creativity in how that community engagement actually happens. I feel like there are so many opportunities to bridge the art and planning spaces.

There's also significant funding available in city planning, where there were ways to organize creative efforts to facilitate that engagement... The hard part is actually translating the engagement into policy. I think that's always where the gap happens, because a lot of times people feel like, "Oh, you're just gathering feedback to make us feel good, and then you're going to do whatever you want to do anyway." So making it genuinely impactful is always the challenge. But I think even just using creative approaches to cultivate dialogue is a valuable starting point for that type of work.

So there was one of your projects where you asked community members that I would like to ask you, if that’s okay — What is one question you would pose to the community? 

Oh. This is a tough one — it’s a good question. I think I would ask people, what inspires you most about your community? I think in terms of  generating community engagement or people to feel like they want to participate or contribute to something, it's important to lean on the elements that feel inspirational or stimulating and to go from there. 

And if I were to answer my own question, I think going back to the original, first thing you asked about Seattle, I feel like I'll never live in a place that's as beautiful as Seattle. I feel like it's important for Seattle (and it already does this a bit) is to lean more into itscultural heritage and how is it tied in with the land and the landscape It is already sort of intertwined in many ways, but I think sometimes it leans so much into the land but I think even weaving in the story of the people of combined with the land is a way to elevate the city’s legacy as it develops in the future.


I’d like to talk about your vignettes and landscapes you did in Haiti and about your travels there. What inspired you to go?

I went for the first time in 2018, and then I went again in 2019. I went just because I felt like it was important for me to see with my own eyes, even though I could just tell that my dad and my aunts and uncles, they held certain traumas from the experience because they left during the dictatorship, which is definitely valid. And so my whole life I was told never to go there. But also felt there's this opportunity to understand. I knew an uncle there who was happy to host me and had the resources to go so I made it happen and had a great time. It wasn't until, last year, that my dad was like, “I'm glad you went,” which I think was really powerful. It was my plan to go every year but then Covid happened and also the political situation deteriorated when the president was assassinated in 2021 so I haven’t been able to return since.

And at the time I wasn't thinking about making any art from it. It was just taking photos from the experiences. We went on a number of road trips across the country. So the collage series groups a lot of those experiences of different parts of the island. 

The nice thing about collage is when I'm taking the photos, I'm never thinking about what the collage will be. I enjoy it as a way where I can just take whatever photos I want of the trip and things that interest me. Architecture, sky, pavement, landscapes, all these things. And then I can look at the whole afterwards and create compositions after the fact. I think that's something that's always driven me in my art practice, it’s very personal to my experiences. That's something that drives all of the sort of collage work that I make. It’s very much rooted in places that I've been and experienced, but kind of recreate, like transposing in a new way so the memory lives on. I get to look at the pieces every day, and I remember the experiences of being there, which feels very powerful.

We’ve established you are firmly interdisciplinary, so as far as you’re book making, it’s somewhere between a two dimensional sculptural space or three dimensional social space. Are you working the same way as you work in collage or photography or is it some other kind of storytelling for you?

The thing that I like about book making is there's always a narrative to it, like an actual structural narrative to the format.

The project that I'm working on actually ties into my practice as a whole. I was in Zanzibar for six months between 2022 and 2023 and I had taken all of these photos of window grill patterns. All of them were so distinct in their designs, they were all customized and had these spectacular patterns just woven into the landscape. You could tell that there's no mass production. Every single one felt like a piece of art. I documented over 300 with my phone so I could see where they are in a map and speak to that kind of psychogeography aspect of walking observation and documentation. I think the metal patterns are quite fascinating because of the cultural context of Zanzibar. It is at the head many cultures — you have the East African context because it is off the coast of Tanzania, and it used to be part of the Omani Empire. lot of the patterns are very Islamic and you can see these spiritual aspects woven into the symbolism. But also it’s on the Indian Ocean so there's a connection to South Asia as well.

The larger themes that I'm curious about, and this is across all of my work, is environmental aesthetics and this idea of what the elements in our environment say about who we are. We walk around our environments every day, and we take it for granted that everything here was specifically designed and built with intention. Like, this used to be plants and trees. The more you look into it, there's a curiosity of what it says about who built it.

As a photo book that shows the patterns can also elevate these larger curiosities and narratives around these environments and what those elements say about people and culture. I think a photo book feels like the appropriate medium for that to develop the archive.

I'm curious to see how that project can develop. I feel like the photo book is the first stage to develop that research into an artistic format. The photo book is an element that’s been on the side of my practice, but also something I consistently came back to.It's a way for me to articulate research before tackling larger projects. Because of the format, it's on a small scale, so it feels like a way to take a larger collection of information and create a writing structure around it. And then maybe it becomes something larger that gets transposed into a different form.