Insightful Incisions
Every Year They Grow From Nothing 
When I Become A Tree 
When I Become A Tree In Fall (detail) 
When I Become A Tree / Taking Off 
Lying In Red 
When I Become A Tree Aflame 
I Thought I Was Supporting You #3
By Tom Wachunas
“… Woodcut is incredibly physical and energetic, but
also requires a level of intimacy and care in carving each mark. The resulting
work is subtle, careful and rash, reflecting my own state of being as the
artist…” - Meryl Engler
From Merriam-Webster: Catharsis (kə-ˈthär-səs)
a: purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity
and fear) primarily through art
b: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual
renewal or release from tension
EXHIBIT: I Had Been Young Vol. 2 – woodcut prints
by Meryl Engler / THROUGH MARCH 1, 2024, at The Lemmon Visiting Artist Gallery, in
the Fine Arts Building at Kent State University at Stark, 6000 FRANK AVENUE NW,
NORTH CANTON, OH / Gallery hours Monday – Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
About the artist: 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. In 2022 she started working at the Morgan Conservatory and learned
Eastern and Western papermaking techniques and now incorporates papermaking
into her print work. She has shown both
nationally and internationally...
**********************************************************
In her statement
for this exhibit, Engler writes that in this latest series of prints, “…I
felt compelled to delve into my personal narrative…using self-portraiture,
herons that symbolize messengers of change and transformation, quilts to
portray nurture and caring, and one very peculiar tree…”
That tree
had been growing through a few seasons in, of all unlikely places, a parking
lot - a location, she surmised, annoying to “most people” - near her Akron
residence. Yet she came to see it as a unique symbol of her own growth and
change.
Mesmerizing in their complex patterns and
linearities, Engler’s images are at once crowded and airy. Breathtaking and
breath-giving. Lines of varying densities harmonize and seem to breathe as they
rise and spread outward from tight clusters of foliate shapes. Her mark-making
has a calligraphic sort of elegance about it, as if the imagery wasn’t carved
so much as written in cursive style. Further, Engler’s incorporation of color
imbues many of her images with a diaphanous light you might well call palpable
magic. Nowhere is all this dazzling intimacy and intricacy more commanding than
in the sheer ambitious scale of several monumental prints mounted on the
gallery’s longest wall. They’re eight feet tall! Talk about wild grace…
The marvelous
fluidity and exactitude of these meticulous renderings is absolutely entrancing.
Insightful. Insiteful. They’re incised with all the skilled precision of a
surgeon’s scalpel. And so they do indeed
cut to the heart, as it were, of a beautiful personal catharsis.