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| Mary Merkel-Hess | ||
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Fiber artist May Merkel-Hess was born and raised in Iowa where the landscape is dominated by billowing fields of grass and corn. Her sculptural basket-like forms, which she refers to as “landscape reports” are inspired by these natural surroundings. Using reeds and paper, Merkel-Hess’s work conjures images of slender grasses and cultivated fields, shaped and tamed like Iowa’s gridded landscape. Her continual use of the basket form is another symbolic reference to nature and life as it carries and stores the earth’s bounty. Merkel-Hess makes baskets using a technique that she developed, a combination of three-dimensional collage and paper mache. The vessels are made over molds. Small pieces of paper are applied with glue to the mold and allowed to dry, thus creating a paper form that is removed from its mold and further manipulated. Over the years, Merkel-Hess has discovered many variations of this technique. She has used thin and thick papers, varied the shapes, and included paper cord, reed, or fiber in the body of the vessels. Merkel-Hess has made interior forms for the baskets and then covered them with a “skin” of transparent paper. She makes vessels because she is fascinated with from and structure. She looks for inspiration in the natural world, and then allows technique to mesh with these visual ideas to create something new. Merkel-Hess enjoys all aspects of this process: the appreciation of the world around her that suggests ideas and the search for a method of construction that allows her ideas to take shape. |
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Please email the gallery to view more works by Mary Merkel-Hess. |
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Affiliations PAPERMAKING FOR BASKETRY, lynn Stearns and Shereen La Plantz, Bayside CA THE BASKETMAKER'S ART, Rob Pulleyn, Ninepress, Asheville, NC AMERICAN CRAFT, "Mary Merkel-Hess: Construsting Form" LIFEWORK:POTRAITS OF IOWA WOMEN ARTISTS Collections Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY American Craft Museum, New York, NY LongHouse foudation, East Hampton, NY Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA Wustum Museum of Art, Racine, WI Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA Commissions Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY American Craft Museum American Craft Museum, New York, NY Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA University of Iowa Musuem of Art, Iowa City, IA Wustum Museum of Art, Racine, WI Cedar Rapids Musuem of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA Exhibitions Shared Pasion, AZ. State University Baskets Now: USA, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR Blurring the Line: Where Vessel and Sculpture Meet, Craft Alliance, St. Louis MO The Art of Contemporary Fiber, Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX Mary Merkel-Hess: Nature's Bounty, Philadelphia International Airport, PA Out of Floating Waves:Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN The Art of Asian Paper, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA American Basketmaking: Tradition and Innovation, Arrowmont, Gatlinburg, TN Threads; Contemporary Basketry in the Midwest, Curator, Waterloo Museum of Art, Waterloo, IA Celebrating American Craft: Kunstindustrie Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI Iowa Artists 1995, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA Ceramic and Fiber: a New Generation, Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI The Space Within: Comtemporary Basketry in the Midwest, Curator, Waterloo Museum of Art, Waterloo, IA Women's Voices. Drake University, Des Moines, IA New Acquisitions, American Craft Museum, New York, NY Basketry From All Directions, Arrowmont School, Gatlinburg, TN Basketry Spectrum, Rome Art Center, Rome,NY Basketry Invitational, Iowa State University, Ames, IA Somewhere I have never traveled gladly beyond, Appalachian Center for the Crafts, Smithville, TN Avant Garde Approaches to Basketry, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO Contemporary Basketry, Textile Art Center, Chicago, IL |
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