In 1975 Melchert had a solo show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It consisted mostly of slide projections. But, he also presented a series of ‘graphite rubbings’. The idea for this came from watching his wife, Mary Ann, using a graphite pencil and a piece of paper to record the odd surfaces in and around their house. Beneath his Rubbings, Melchert would write a brief, poetic, handwritten synopsis of the rubbed object and what was concealed from the viewer. He explained, “I would just tape a photograph on the wall and then put paper over it and do a rubbing of it. And the object would register but, of course, not the image. So, I would write something having to do with what was in the picture so that a person could project back into the image what they picked up from the writing. You had to simultaneously imagine what was being described and take it on faith that it actually existed. Your life experience would lead you to form an image or fill in the blanks of the story. In that way, the work would be very different for each viewer.”