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EXHIBITIONS
~ MERRILEE CHALLISS BIOGRAPHY
ARTIST STATEMENT
BIOGRAPHY
Challiss was born in 1971 in Cleveland, Oh, but raised in Birmingham, AL. She received her BA in Studio Arts from the University of Alabama in 1994 & her MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2000. She has worked with adults with autism and schizophrenia for five years at a non-profit art studio in her hometown. 3-4 years of her life were spent traveling and living abroad in Eastern Europe, Tunisia, Turkey, and Cambodia, to name a few. She currently lives & works in Birmingham, where she owns & runs a café/bar/venue called BottleTree. ARTIST STATEMENT Merrilee’s mixed media work is the result of multifarious sources: fairy tales, myths, natural history, and medical anomalies. Drawing has always been her abiding passion and is where she begins most of her work, layering patterns obsessively until a sense of order emerges. Many of her recent drawings and paintings have been informed by fascinations as disparate as sub-aquatic realms, tidal pools, and all creatures horned and hoofed. The animals and people in her work are almost always in a protean state. The work reflects Edward O. Wilson’s view, that we’re in an ecological “quickening”, where species are dying off en masse, and nature is being turned on its head. Ultimately, Merrilee’s work reflects her interest in the themes of mutation and regeneration. |
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