Ever since winning her first art prize as a pre-teen, Meryl Engler knew she wanted to be an artist. Born in Southern California, Engler grew up along the coast inspired by the beach and the flowing waves of the Pacific Ocean.
She’s spent her adult life riding an artistic wave from one experience to another always discovering inspiration. From art school at Syracuse University, to grad school in Nebraska, to coaching rowing teams in Oregon, her artistic life has more recently led her to Akron.
Engler got an artist residency at Rubber City Prints in Akron in 2019 and when the pandemic hit, she decided to stay.
“I was able to find work, and the art scene accepted me,” Engler said. “I've really loved it here. So decided to stay, basically.”
Through a network of Ohio artists, Engler was selected to travel to Cuba as part of a residency program with the 2024 Havana Biennial. The biennial invites international artists to experience day-to-day life in Cuba and create artwork in response to their journey. The 2024 Havana Biennial is titled “Shared Horizons.”
“We split our time between the printmaking studio in Havana doing a lithograph print with their master printers and working in the home studio of Abel Barroso, who is a woodcut artist and sculpture artist,” she said.
Despite living in various places during her life, she’d never experienced anything like Cuba.
“The colors, how they painted their houses, the way the sun hit things,” Engler said. “Their combinations of colors that I would never think to put together, like pinks and greens and yellows, turquoise everywhere. And it made for a very fun, vibrant kind of city.”
The resulting work is a series of woodcuts pieced together in a single artwork called, “Reflecting Along the Road,” which will hang in the Havana Biennial beginning in November.
“Collaborations and cultural exchanges are important because I think the more experiences you have, the more things you have to draw upon for your work,” she said.
Not to mention the sunny, warm weather.
“Coming out of the winter in Ohio, you're not used to that as much. And so that was really inspiring. I really liked it,” she said.
