Nathan Meltz, a senior lecturer in the Department of Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an award-winning printmaker, has been chosen to exhibit his work in a show that encourages artists to explore the impacts of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Meltz’s work, Collapse, will be on display in a group exhibition called “Infinite Uncertainty” from Sept. 1 through Oct. 10 at the Opalka Gallery on the Albany campus of Russell Sage College. For the exhibition, which showcases artists responding to a changing world, only 33 artists were selected from more than 250 submissions.

“Part of an artist’s job is to try make sense of the world and to find the beauty and truth in any situation, no matter how profoundly hard or disastrous the situation is,” Meltz said. “When the pandemic hit and I had access to only 20% of my usual studio supplies, the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t what I couldn’t make, but rather, what I could make with what I had on hand.”

Collapse advances screen printing as a three-dimensional medium. Meltz used 1980s dot matrix printer paper as the base of the 6-foot tall Collapse and handprinted abstractions of guns and hammers on a background of violent reds and oranges that blend together against the contrasting sky blue.

This time of social upheaval has also informed the curriculum Meltz will bring to arts students this fall for both online and in-person instruction.

“The ideas, emotions, and passions in our heads can transcend the tools we’re used to having around, and allow us to make consequential art,” Meltz said. “We can still have meaningful experiences, albeit in different ways. If we are willing to lean into discomfort, we have the opportunity to create something the world has never seen before.”

Meltz’s work is also currently featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida, in a show called “Multiple Ones: Perspectives in Print Media,” which explores the concepts of experimental printmaking. His screen-printed sculpture, Are You Ready for That Great Atomic Power? 5, will be on display from July 1, 2020 through Jan. 24, 2021.