Bio

Mellenbruch’s work spans a variety of mediums with an emphasis on public sculpture and research intensive socially engaged projects. He has received numerous awards including a Creative Capital Award, the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, two Rocket Grant Awards, a KCMO Municipal Art Commission Grant and an East Ninth Street Grant funded by Art Place America. Mellenbruch regularly works as an embedded artist on interdisciplinary research projects including the Virtual Vector Laboratory, an ongoing international research project focused on insect borne disease, and the NIH funded RII Track-2 FEC: Marshalling Diverse Big Data Streams to Understand Risk of Tick-borne Diseases in the Great Plains.

Mellenbruch’s sculptures are in the permanent collections of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kauffman Foundation, The Kauffman Memorial Garden, the Kansas City Zoo, Lakeside Nature Center, Johnson County Community College, Hyde Park, 18Broadway Garden and Powell Gardens. Mellenbruch earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the Maine College of Art.