Mentoring Emerging Artists Not sure if you’re an emerging artist? Visit our How It Works page.
MEDIUM: Textiles | Drawing | Mixed Media | Printmaking SPECIALTY: ✔ Finding Your Artistic Voice
My artist mentorship group will focus on the formal elements and the conceptual underpinnings of participants’ work. The group will also be an appropriate place to ask for help with artist statements, proposals, and resumes.
Artists will share images of finished and in progress works. I am a big believer in there being wisdom in the room with groups of artists. The group will discuss the work and individuals will receive constructive feedback from me and their peers. Peer feedback is valuable information about what a viewer may experience when observing one’s work.
My own work is based on experiences, research, and autobiographical narrative. In addition to the group responding to each others’ works in terms of formal elements, I will facilitate questions, exercises, and conversations to help artists’ mine their stories and translate their stories into visual communication. Some self-reflection and short writing prompts will be employed to spark ideas.
I am interested in supporting artists representing themselves through the written word and welcome opportunities to review artist statements, proposals, and resumes.
Merill’s EXPERTISE
Listed below are this Mentor’s specialty skills. Join this group if you want to grow in these areas.
Specialty: ✔ Finding Your Artistic Voice
Technical:
Z
Composition
Z
Providing Critiques
Marketing:
Z
Artist Statement & CV
Business:
Z
Studio Time Management
Z
Running your art business the day-to-day
Z
Mining autobiography for creating narrative art
“Mastrius is a perfect balance of accountability, community and fun. It feels like family. Family that makes you a better you.” ~ Elizabeth, Emerging Artist
JOIN NOW
select your mentorship group
If the group you’re interested in has a waitlist, you have the option to join another group to get started. When your group opens we can transfer you over.
Emerging
Mentorship Membership
$ USD87/Month
Next session: May 02, 2024
On the 1st Thursday of every month 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM MDT Thu
COMING SOON Join the waitlist to receive an email when this group becomes available.
Not your timezone? Click below
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Embracing installations, wall hangings, paintings, and garments, my work mines autobiography and investigates current socio-political issues. I am inspired by traditions of craft and the history of ‘women’s work.’ My choices of materials and processes are informed by trauma, feminism, and a concern for the inequitable use of the earth’s resources. I employ worn fabrics of the domestic sphere and the mark making of stitch to convey contemporary narratives of mending and endurance. Ninety percent of my materials are repurposed textiles — mother-in-law’s blouse, stained tablecloth, discontinued designer prints — each communicating identity and status while revealing lived lives and embodying memory. I compost, paint, print, and rust my source fabrics transforming them into my own visual language and creating a new, sensual surface. In my work you will see representations of nature symbolizing the human life cycle and abstract assemblages exploring ephemerality and loss. As I stitch hundreds of snippets together, each part becomes integral to the whole, akin to the sum of the many moments that make up a lifetime.
I believe we communicate visually because some things in life defy verbal language. My proudest moments are conversations I’ve had with viewers who find my work evocative. As they perceive my intentions, we share common challenges and concerns. I’ve have executed over thirty community projects, completed over fifteen private commissions, and my work is on view in major hospitals and institutions. I have exhibited widely including an interactive project titled Threads of Connection at Art Lab of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In addition to work with textiles, I draw and paint, often adding stitch. My large-scale drawings have won juror and staff awards at the Fitchburg Museum of Art.
As an artist, I enjoy putting my efforts towards educating other artists through teaching workshops and supporting art organizations as a volunteer. I teach at, and am on the Board of Directors of, Snow Farm Center the New England Craft Program and I am a member of the Events Committee for the international Surface Design Association organizing biannual conferences and workshops.
