Meryl Engler grew up in Huntington Beach, California and moved to Akron, Ohio in fall 2019. Meryl attended Syracuse University where she studied sculpture, printmaking, religious studies and history, while also competing on the women’s rowing team. Next she went to graduate school at University of Nebraska-Lincoln for studio art with an emphasis in printmaking. This is where she developed her love of colorful woodcut prints, often using pattern and repetition. She is inspired by hidden landscapes in our environment and the relationships we form to it and each other. She has shown both nationally and internationally. Meryl seeks to push the limits of printmaking and combine different art mediums in new and exciting ways.
Artist Statement
As an artist working primarily in woodcut, I create multi-layered prints that evoke intimate and magical moments within the concealed landscapes of our surroundings. Woodcut is incredibly physical and energetic. I like to say that my strokes are strong and big and powerful because I am strong and big and powerful. But woodcut also requires a level of intimacy and care in carving each mark. There is a level of trust that must be achieved with the material and in oneself. The marks and colors can interact in delicate ways. The resulting work is physical, subtle and bold. Carving and printing is a completely cathartic act.
I find that I remember things in landscapes. I remember playing in the ocean as a child, watching the light dance along the waves. I remember the piles of fabric and yarn surrounding my mother as she sat to sew quilts, the patterns becoming rolling fields or crashing waves. And now, living in Ohio, I imagine what hides behind the vine-covered fences or in the walls of leaves that seem to grow from nothing each spring. I say “concealed landscapes” because I am drawn to the hidden or overlooked parts of our environment. Trees growing in parking lots, knotted vines, or broken fences become the subjects and settings of my work. I build these worlds with color woodcut prints in multiple transparent layers, each color informing and affecting the layer that will get put on top. For me this mimics the building or recollection of memories, as each layer can either add clarity or obscure the image. Lately I have been adding figures to my work, loosely inspired by folklore and mythology, as characters to interact within these places.