Shelling Peas

Limited edition artist’s book, signed by Melissa Zarem

Artwork and text by Melissa Zarem

Book design and fabrication by Elise Nicol

80 pages

$120

Shelling Peas is an artist's book by Melissa Zarem that pairs her abstract painting with short prose pieces. Together image and text accumulate into a book about attention and observation so that image and text together read as one sustained act of noticing.

The book was designed, printed, and handmade by the artist Elise Nicol, making this a limited artist's edition in the fullest sense: a collaboration between two artists and an object meant to be held as carefully as the world it describes. 

Elise Nicol is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited at Cornell University and Ithaca College (both Ithaca, NY), Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), The Print Center (Philadelphia), Buddy Holly Fine Art Center (Lubbock, TX), Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockport), Springfield Art Museum (Springfield, MO), Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University (Chico), and Soho Photo (New York, NY), among many other venues. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art Library, The Library of Congress, Boise Art Museum, Mesa Arts Center, Photomedia Center, Graphic Chemical and Ink Company, and more. She is the recipient of an Anderson Ranch Arts Center Scholarship and a Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency. 

Melissa Zarem grew up with artistic roots in two very different cities, New York City and Savannah, Georgia. She earned a  BFA from Cornell University and subsequently relocated to Ithaca in 2006.  Zarem has been represented by both Corners Gallery (Ithaca, NY) and Exhibit A, (Corning, NY).  She became a featured artist at Ithaca College (2013), Aqua Art Miami (2014), and at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University (2015) where her work was acquired for their permanent collection. Her work has been exhibited at the Abrons Art Center (New York, NY), the Arnot Museum (Elmira, NY), Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, NY), Novado Gallery (Jersey City, NJ), and  SUNY Corning Community College (Corning, NY). Zarem has been awarded grants, and fellowships from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2016), the Vermont Studio Center (2023), Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County (2016 and 2023) and the Legacy Foundation (2024). Spring Loaded, a book of her black and white drawings was published by EYE Gallery (2016). Stone Canoe Literary Journal  published Zarem’s work in a 2025 issue. Zarem’s recent projects have been in collaboration with other artists, including a pandemic related project called No Words: a Postcard-Based Conversation Between Two Artists with Elise Nicol. The latter was recently exhibited at Cornell University’s School of Architecture Art and Planning in Close Work, Distanced: Pandemic Collaborations. In 2026, she collaborated with Werner Sun and co-curated In Process, a collective residency with Eyevee Arts at Cortright Electric in Ithaca, NY.