Michael Mercil, an internationally known artist who serves as associate professor of art at The Ohio State University, will present the 17th annual Deem Distinguished Artist Lecture for the West Virginia University Division of Art and Design on Thursday (March 10).
He will speak at 5 p.m. in the Creative Arts Center’s Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (Room 200A). The event is free and open to the public.
Mercil received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1984 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1978.
His artwork has recently been exhibited at the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City, the Columbus Museum of Art, the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and the University of Virginia Art Museum.
In 2006, he planted “The Beanfield” at the Wexner Center—a project with the Wexner Center for the Arts, the OSU Department of Art Living Culture Initiative, and the Social Responsibility Initiative in the College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.
Mercil’s public commissions include the Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh, and Teardrop Park in New York City, both with artist Ann Hamilton and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.
His awards include an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, a Progressive Architecture Citation Award, a McKnight Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Artist Design Fellowship, and a Jerome Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship.
A former contributor to PLACES magazine, Mercil has published work in TriQuarterly and Public Art Review.
The annual Deem Distinguished Visiting Art Lecture is made possible through a donation to the WVU College of Creative Arts from Alison and Patrick Deem of Bridgeport, W.Va.
For more information about the lecture, contact the College of Creative Arts at (304) 293-4359. See Mercil’s website at www.michaelmercil.com.
-WVU-
CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu
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