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Hugh Merrill is proud to announce the release of Divergent Consistencies, a book charting his studio and community artwork from 1968 through 2011 (edited by Adelia Ganson, design by Amanda Rehagen). Merrill’s 40 year career of art-making was formed by a range of experiences, from his early years as a printmaker through his recent community work with disadvantaged children in Kansas City. Merrill’s studio art includes a wide scope of emphasis, from the conceptual deconstruction of the modernist grid to the physical destruction of the etching plate. He is perhaps best known for his sequential etching prints that explore abstraction of landscape and reference human emotion. An established commitment to the excavation and reversal of traditional form, place and value extend to his community work as well. The artist’s work with the general public is firmly rooted in the civil rights movement of the American South in the 1960’s, where personal experience led him to desire social justice for marginalized populations. Currently, Merrill is designing arts programming for Eric Fischl’s national community arts project America Now and Here, focusing on the idea of America in 2011. This project was designed to subvert extreme political dialogue and to help the national population connect with each other through the arts. A sense of social justice and a unique vision of Americana extend far beyond Merrill’s home in Kansas City, Missouri. He will visit Guanlan Printmaking Base in Shenzhen, China in the fall of 2012, where his Capital series of digital mixed media prints are now on view. These works reflect an examination of changing political viewpoints in the United States. A selected exhibition of his Birds of America series, which reinterprets eight John James Audubon prints, can been seen through April 30, 2011 at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Later this year Merrill will show his Power and Consequence pieces at the LVAC. Informed by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this exhibit opens June 3 and continues through July 31.
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News Archive Community-Studio Integration |
