In the HAC Gallery

In addition work from 65+ local artists, HAC's Gallery & Gift Shop exhibits art work from emerging and historically unrepresented local artists through its Gallery program. The Gallery & Gift Shop hosts pop-up events, demonstrations, receptions, and artist talks during Last Fridays & the Art Walk and beyond. Read on to learn about the exhibition currently in the HAC Gallery.

Dwelling With Felt Lemons

Mer Haggerty

A collage house with the gallery show title cut out, a fox girl in a red dress, and a lemon on either side.

In Dwelling With Felt Lemons, Mer explores moments of tension, care, loss, conflict, quiet, and sweetness experienced while in creative company with others. These moments have happened during walks, in collaborative workspaces, shared housing, and in art studios. While this series is personal (a love letter to those who have accompanied her in such moments), it is also intended as an invitation for the viewer to reflect upon creative moments as bright spots full of meaning and create a felt piece for the ongoing participatory felt board. Making this work affirmed Mer's sense that keeping creative company is crucial for our hearts, especially within the current social-political landscape.

Visitors are invited to cut their own felt shapes and add to the felt board!

Artist Statement

I work with collage and participatory practices within the sphere of visual art to explore the value of becoming familiar with difficult feelings including loss, fear, transition, uncertainty, heartbreak, and failure.

My collages feature images of canines, ghosts, deer, and humans in attempts to cultivate closeness and community through expressions of deep care, love, grief, and conflict via creative practice. My materials (paper, felt, thread, glue, and paint) serve as metaphors regarding rupture, repair, and transformation through inquiry regarding our emotional landscapes including feelings of others.

A collage representing a fox girl silhouetted in the doorway of an orange house surrounded by green foliage.

My social practice is rooted in free, public participatory events that invite visitors to arts events to engage with materials that offer playful metaphors for our emotional landscapes including felt, studio scraps, and failed works of art.

My visual Influences include Italian altarpieces from the Late Middle Ages as well as works by Frida Kahlo, Philip Guston, Kerry James Marshall, Kathe Kollwitz, Kara Walker, and Henri Matisse. My favorite writers include Leonard Cohen, Helen Oyeyemi, Mona Awad, Louise Erdrich, Mia P. Manasala, Carol Horton, and Pema Chödrön. I keep the work of Lynda Barry, James Marshall, and Bob Dylan close to my heart, often reflecting upon my collaborations with health care providers, meditation instructors, and fellow artists. Also part of my practice is memories of summer hikes in the great lakes region and creative spaces I’ve shared with others, including art studios, living spaces, and classrooms.

A collage representing a stack of three paint boxes (vertically arranged smallest to largest) with a lemon on top.

Biography

Using collage, storytelling, and social practice, Mer explores the process of paying attention to emotional landscapes, specifically the parts related to grief, loss, pain, and loneliness.

After completing an MFA in 2007, Mer worked for a decade at the University of Chicago to develop campus-wide programming in mind-body medicine. Her programs explored the relations between art, health, education, and spirituality, helping participants develop life and work patterns that promote physical and emotional well-being. This included clinical work with a non-surgical orthopedist, site-specific yoga and meditation classes in galleries, gyms, and campus chapels that addressed themes like

vulnerability, inclusiveness, and acceptance. At the University of Chicago’s medical school, she collaborated with faculty to develop and teach a fourth-year Empathy class and mind-body curriculums in the first year symposium and family medicine rotation. In 2013, Meredith was granted the Campus and Student Life Award for Outstanding Service to the Community.

Currently, Mer explores similar themes through solo and participatory collage practices. Whenever possible, she creates public art making spaces, including her ongoing felt board and (along with Erin McCluskey Wheeler) has developed a scrap-based social collage series called The Collage Stop.

Mer is the recipient of several grants from the Orange County Arts Commission and regularly exhibits her solo and participatory work in the Triangle. She has been in group exhibitions at Peel, Lump, Eno Arts Mill, and The Durham Arts Guild. Her 2018 Solo exhibition was at Shelf Space Gallery which was located in a convenience store in Carrboro, NC. She has completed three art residencies in rural NC public schools through the AIMS program at the NCMA. She is grateful to have been part of Rebuilding the Present at Weinberg Newton Gallery, Pathogeographies (or, Other People's Baggage), Our Literal Speed, and The Pedagogical Factory.

Mer lives with her daughter and spouse, Tal, in Hillsborough, North Carolina where she co-leads Art Rebels Mini Camps for Orange County Arts Commission.

Follow Mer on Instagram!