Merill Comeau on Life, Lessons & Legacy

We recently had the chance to connect with Merill Comeau and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Merill, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What are you chasing, and what would happen if you stopped?
I believe most of us face many challenges in life. I continually chase visually voicing human concerns and documenting struggles as words often fail to communicate adequate compassion. Through making and sharing art, I am able to generate meaningful conversations of shared understanding, support, and healing. For me, integral to the satisfaction of being an artist and making objects are the earnest dialogues my work evokes at exhibitions.

What would happen if I stopped? That would be a sad day. My question is: will we ever have less need for compassion and care? I don’t think so. I cannot imagine giving up on positively engaging and enhancing human interaction.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I document, interrogate, and express contemporary and historical stories while investigating loss, longing, and comfort. Human experiences of challenge and growth inspire my work. Sometimes my work uses realistic illustrative imagery but more often I use abstraction to communicate a sense of time and lives lived. I draw, paint, and print on paper and I collect, deconstruct, alter, and reconstruct textiles. To build my pieces, I employ modern interpretations of traditional craft methods of sewing, hand stitching, and embroidery. These techniques obliquely refer to globalization, industry and hierarchies of value while honoring influences of quilting and clothing construction. My large two-dimensional wall hangings are graphically strong from a distance and provide an intricate sensual experience when seen up close.

We spend our entire lives with textiles – swaddled, dressed, sleeping, celebrating special rites of passage. Viewers often recognize familiar fabric elements in my work that remind them of their own intimate moments in cloth. My materials and methods result in corporeally evocative art which helps facilitate the essential purpose of my work – to evoke dialogue and forge relationships of common human concern.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I took a winding path through college. I studied art at a small college in Vermont, took time off to work in welfare advocacy and apprentice to a jeweler, then attended a university bouncing between women’s studies, psychology, philosophy, sociology, social theory, and political economy. My career has been a winding path as well including non-profit administration, antiques restoration, cabinet making, and architectural design. When I look back, I can see that I developed my sense of the world by reading social theory: Freud and Marx and subsequent thinkers. I learned to look beyond the surfaces of things, people, and human organizations. It is such a complete change of understanding, I can never go back to a certain level of naivety. This shaping of how I see the world is the underpinning of my motivation to work with visual communication to forge human connections.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
I wouldn’t use the phrase ‘almost gave up’ because I have a fighter in me that never says die. But, I did, at one point, go through a period of burn out. I am quite driven and ambitious in what I expect of myself. I am in charge of my career, quality and quantity of output, and my commitment to doing civic good. I have high expectations; I set my own deadlines. Right as the pandemic hit I could feel I was burning out; I lost the joy of being in the studio. I continued to respond to some required demands — teaching on zoom etc — but also dedicated a good chunk of time off from producing and put hours into self-reflection. It was a difficult period. I asked myself some hard questions, I interviewed people I respected for feedback and advice, and I let others take the wheel directing my development by enrolling in their classes. The time of isolation required by the pandemic became a time of learning and growth for me. I found my way back to the joys of my work.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Is the public version of you the real you?
I have a public and a private version of me. They are both the real me.

In pubic, I am happiest when I have a job to do. I facilitate groups, moderate panels, organization symposia. I am comfortable talking in front of groups; I enjoy people’s questions and thinking on my feet. These public activities bring out my energetic upbeat extrovert side.

When people first meet me in my public version of self, they often expect that level of engagement, energy, and enthusiasm around the clock and in all situations. But, the private version of me is an introvert — I sit in the back of the classroom, I read a book in the cafeteria, and I am terribly shy at cocktail parties.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people will continue to find beauty and solace from my work. For example, hospitals are one of my biggest clients. I have heard from people who found solace standing in front of my work while visiting a close relative fighting cancer. The softness of fabric, the intricacies of stitch, and the vibrant coloration of floral references provide some people a moment of calm, joy, and hope that all will bloom or be reborn again. Whether my work is in a private residence of a public space, I hope it evokes lifting human emotions or the comfort of shared yearning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.merillcomeau.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merillcomeau/