Colleen Toutant Merrill
Colleen Merrill’s work playfully scrutinizes historic notions of morality and gender ideals within the family and home. Select exhibitions of her work have been held at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Greenville, NC, VisArts in Richmond, VA, Massey Klein Gallery and Compare Collective in NYC, Institute 193 in Lexington, KY, Zephyr Gallery and Carnegie Center in Louisville, KY, Arc Gallery in San Francisco, CA, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in PA, and the International Textile Biennial in Haacht, Belgium.
Merrill has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Great Meadows Foundation to travel and research in New Orleans, England, and Scotland, and to attend Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, New York. She has been awarded fellowships for attending the Byrdcliffe Artist Residency in New York and the Pentaculum Textiles Residency at the Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Tennessee. Select publications of her work include the book, The Handmade Life: A Companion to Modern Crafting (The Craft Companion) by Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson, in Pint an international publication by Milked Magazine, and in Textiel Plus Magazine, printed in the Netherlands.
Merrill earned her MFA from the University of Kentucky and BFA from the University of Cincinnati. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Bluegrass Community & Technical College and occasional Instructor in Fiber & Material Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.