Bio
Melanie Elyse Brewster (b. Miami, Florida) is a Greek-American interdisciplinary artist and scholar based in New York City. She earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2024 and her PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Florida in 2011.
Brewster’s solo exhibitions include: Brazosport College Art Gallery (Lake Jackson, TX) and a forthcoming show at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY) in 2026. Selected group shows include: Wönzimer Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), The CAMP Gallery (Miami, FL), The Invisible Dog Art Center (Brooklyn, NY), La Mama Galleria (Manhattan, NY), Gallery 263 (Cambridge, MA), Arts Warehouse (Delray Beach, FL), Clara M. Lovett Art Museum (Flagstaff, AZ), and Koehnline Museum of Art (Chicago, IL).
She has been an artist-in-residence at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and ChaNorth. In 2026 she will hold a Space & Time Artist Residency at Guttenberg Arts in New Jersey.
Focusing on stigma and queer futurities, she has been a professor in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University since 2011. Brewster has published over 75 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a book, Atheists in America, on experiences of marginality and stress in the United States. She previously served as an editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology as well as Secularism and Nonreligion. Her research has been featured in media outlets such as CNN, NPR, Vice News, and the CBC. Notably, LGBTQ workplace research she conducted with colleagues was used in APA’s amicus brief for the 2020 SCOTUS case on Title VII discrimination protection.
She has received awards from the American Psychological Association (APA) such as: the Fritz & Linn Kuder Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Counseling Psychology, Early Career Award for Contributions to LGBT Counseling Psychology, Women of Color Psychologies Award, Barbara Kirk Award, Psychotherapy with Women Award, among many others. She was selected to be a Public Voices Fellow in 2017 by Columbia University.
Brewster maintains a studio in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn.
Abbreviated Art CV is available here.
Psychology CV is available here.
Artist Statement
As an interdisciplinary artist, I engage in a robust research-based practice to build new mythologies of worship, care, and mourning. Primarily working in sculpture and fiber, I construct parafictional installations and intimate ritual objects with clay and found materials (i.e., family heirlooms, upcycled fabrics). Often depicting feminine hybrid creatures and false deities, my work distorts and retells traditional narratives of sexuality, gender, and kinship from a contemporary queer lens. With surreal heraldic imagery and campy deconstructed banners, I trouble the bizarre paradoxes inherent in spiritual and ‘wellness’ practices to foster new forms of unconventional belief.
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Installation view of Palo Santo, Candle & Crystal, and Evil Eye masks (2022).
Still from Pandemic Weavings, 2020, performance documentation, Wassaic, NY.