Ontario

Artist Bio

Melissa Panth is a Canadian visual artist and sculptor based in London, Ontario. Working primarily in polymer clay combined with recycled and found materials, fabric, and paint, she creates figurative and animal-based sculptures that are tactile, layered, and psychologically expressive.

Panth’s work is informed by her early years growing up on a farm, where close contact with animals, nature, and imaginative play shaped a lifelong interest in hidden worlds and emotional storytelling. Later experiences of urban life and personal relationships further deepened her exploration of vulnerability, connection, and memory. These influences converge in sculptures that blur the boundary between the human and animal, the tender and the unsettling.

Through a process that combines hand-built forms with assembled and repurposed materials, Panth creates figures that function as both narrative objects and emotional presences. She often describes her sculptures as companions, reflecting her interest in intimacy, empathy, and the quiet inner lives of beings both real and imagined.

Panth was born in London, Ontario, where she continues to live and work as an active member of the city’s creative community.

Artist’s Statement for The dancing Rats

This series of five dancing rats emerged through an intuitive, open-ended making process. Rather than beginning with fixed designs, I allowed each figure to develop its own character as I worked, guided by gesture, expression, and a sense of play. The rats are anthropomorphic and theatrical, dressed in worn yet elegant costumes that suggest both celebration and survival.

My focus was on joy — not as something uniform, but as something deeply individual. Each rat expresses delight in a different way: through posture, gaze, and movement. Together they form a small, lively community, united by dance yet distinct in personality.

The figures are built on wire armatures wrapped in textiles, with polymer clay heads and paws, glass eyes, and mohair fur. Their costumes are made from layered fabrics, lace scraps, beads, and crocheted elements dyed with tea, giving them a softly aged, lived-in quality. Through these materials, I aim to evoke tenderness, resilience, and the beauty of imperfection.