About Meryl Pataky
As an artist of many disciplines and mediums, Meryl focuses on the relationship between her hands and material. Her work is a physical meditation on the timeless spirituality of craft, manifested by taking materials and imbuing them with meaning. By working with materials that resist, she creates a compromise between her will and reality, accepting the dichotomy within herself. Her recent work has evolved alongside her journey of motherhood, reflecting on dichotomous emotions both personal and universal.
Meryl is the founder of She Bends, an organization dedicated to fostering diversity and sustainability in the field of neon. Through curatorial projects and artist programs, she promotes stories from historically underrepresented artists in neon who are developing handcrafted techniques that elevate the medium to the level of process-driven sculpture. She encourages new ways of thinking about neon and works to establish standards related to conservation, pedagogy, and artist copyright, making information available as usable resources for other neon artists.
As a provocateur, Meryl often looks towards the future, making education a significant part of her practice. She has an active teaching practice out of her San Francisco studio, hosting workshops, residencies, and mentorships. In addition to teaching adults how to make neon, Meryl has served as an arts educator and substitute teacher in numerous K-12 schools across San Francisco for the last 12 years.
For the past eight years, she has been the middle school Arts Elective teacher at Synergy School in San Francisco, where she teaches students how to bend glass and design neon patterns. Meryl has also mentored for Southern Exposure's mentorship program and led youth in fellowship with YBCA. In the fellowship, high school students learned how to design neon signs for San Francisco's Healthy Food Coalition initiative, which aims to provide produce and healthy food items in corner stores for underserved residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood.
Meryl's work has been published both in print and online alongside artists such as Ivan Navarro, Robert Montgomery, and Jochen Holz, most notably in Crafts Magazine, Corning Institute's New Glass Review, and Lust for Light. Her work is in the private collection of Museum of Glass, Tacoma WA.
Meryl is represented by Pt.2 Gallery, Oakland CA