Art and Art History

Merrie Wright

Title: Professor & Department Chair
Department: Art and Art History
Building: ARC 135
Email: mewright@uttyler.edu
Phone: 903.566.7423

Degrees

B.F.A., Kansas City Art Institute
M.F.A., Louisiana State University
Area: Ceramics, Introduction to Art

Biography

Merrie Wright received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and an MFA from Louisiana State University. She currently lives in East Texas and is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Wright exhibits her work nationally, has received numerous exhibition awards for her work, and has been cited in several publications, including Ceramics Monthly. She served as one of the 2013 Conference Liaisons for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Art, and was an NCECA board member from 2012-2013 as Conference Liaison and from 2020-2022 as Board Steward. Conference presentations include, ‘Clouds: Capturing Ephemeral Imagery in Enduring Materials,’ which was presented at the 2014 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference.

Select exhibitions include: Brick by Brick at c.r.e.t.a. Rome, small works - BIG IDEAS at the Clay Studio of Missoula, 24th San Angelo National Ceramic Competition at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, Broken and Whole at the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, TX; 2021 Irene Rosenzweig Juried Biennial Exhibition at the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff, AR; City Sine Cera at theNorthern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN; Beyond the Brickyard, 10^th Annual Juried Exhibition at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT; 31st annual Materials: Hard + Soft National Contemporary Craft Competition and Exhibition at the Greater Denton Arts Council, Patterson-Appleton Arts Center in Denton, TX; Tiny Mountains, Cliffs, and Switchbacks: Small Sculpture by Merrie Wright at the Tyler Museum of Art in Tyler, TX; Craft Texas 2016 at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, TX; and Mesmerize at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Art in Houston, TX.

Studio art residencies have become a central part of Wright’s studio practice. She was awarded a six-week International Residency through a partnership with NCECA and The Banff Centre in 2014, a short-term residency at Red Lodge Clay Center during the winter of 2016-2017, she hosted an Artist-Invites-Artists group residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in May 2019, and completed a six-week winter residency as a Banff Artist-in-Residence in 2020. Most recently, she completed a five-week residency at c.r.e.t.a. Rome in spring 2023.

Research Statement

Merrie Wright’s recent work explores the idea of place and landscape, both real and imagined. She sees the landscape as a repository, containing experiences, memories, beliefs, and observations. It holds two realities, the tangible and the ephemeral, simultaneously. The landscape becomes a reflection of the sequence and rhythm of life - encompassing the vastness of geologic time, as well as the immediacy of a particular moment.

Time is of equal significance. The work begins before entering the studio or touching material, with a thoughtful investigation of her surroundings. It may take years before observations and responses to a place translate into form. The process of creating the work is equally time-intensive and meticulous. Each sculptural form is created and glazed by hand, with each layer of the process slowly building upon, and responding to, the one before it. Like strata, these physical and conceptual layers fuse, and the work becomes a record of what the landscape, and all of the complexities that her relationship to it, holds.  

Merrie Wright's Personal Website

Curriculum Vitae Merrie Wright