The Imaginal Institute

Jody Melander
Founding Fellow

For close to 25 years, Jody has imagined in and explored the superb cultural and natural landscape of Provincetown, MA and the Outer Cape.

She has worked as a naturalist with the Center for Coastal Studies, participating in right whale and other research projects, and through the Center and her own company, Outer Cape Explorations, has brought the area's dunes, seashore, marshes, and beach forest to life for thousands of visitors, from school children to Elder Hostel participants, through guided nature walks and nature-based, hands-on art explorations.

She has also been a tireless advocate for the iconoclastic, edge-of-the-world magic of the tip of Cape Cod, both in its philosophic/creative continuity, and of the landscape itself. For example, she is on the Board of Directors of the Peaked Hill Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and continued creative use of historic dune shacks located within the Cape Cod National Seashore. These remarkable buildings have served as summer retreats for a host of writers, artists, and naturalists for over a century.

She has been a potter, painter, tile maker, white line printmaker, writer, and creator of Acme Company art pieces -- sublimely ridiculous sculptures with motorized elements (the most famous of which was a wearable sculpture of a lighthouse complete with moving light and seagulls flying about its tower, which Jody donned to celebrate the successful move of the Truro lighthouse back from the crumbling cliff edge. The AP photo taken of the two lighthouses made the rounds of newspapers around the world.)

Three years ago, Jody brought her disparate skills together to build the first of her Poetic Spaces Dreaming Houses -- exquisite little houses for children and grownups to escape into to imagine and play. You can learn more about her poetic spaces on her website, below.

www.jodymelander.com