Meryl Engler | Every Year They Grow From Nothing, 2023
66 x 84 cm
Edition of 12
Meryl Engler grew up in Huntington Beach, California, and moved to Akron, Ohio fall of 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 the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for studio art with an emphasis on printmaking. This is where she developed her love of colorful woodcut prints, often using pattern and repetition. Currently, Meryl lives and works in Akron Ohio where the city's landscape, people, and history continue to inspire her. Meryl is inspired by hidden landscapes in our environment and the relationships we form with it and each other. She uses woodcut to create layered prints that evoke intimate, magical, and ultimately “human” moments we experience every day and have been experiencing for generations. Humans have gathered around the fire to tell stories and have sought connection to one another when separated. Looking at these moments and relationships, Meryl seeks to transcend the limits of present-day and reach the core of how people exist with others. Woodcut involves working with the resistance of the wood. Controlling the gouge as it cuts through the wood requires focus and the full presence of both mind and body. It is an incredibly intimate medium; each carved mark tells its own story. Woodcut is a physical medium. The strokes are strong and big and powerful or careful slow and measured. The finished print still holds the urgency and intimacy required to make it.
