Gloria King Merritt
Tel: 802.436.2200
Instagram: www.Instagram.com/gloriakingmerritt
Mailing address: PO Box 13, Woodstock VT 05091
Shipping address: 10 Benning Street 226, West Lebanon NH 03784
Digital and New Media Artist
Every generation invents a new artistic technique or medium to create new ways to express the concepts, thoughts and feeling of the age.
Art is, and always will be, an idea, not a medium. Just as the painter's brush is an extension of their hand, so the computer is the extension of the creative mind.
The artist was trained in a variety of traditional fine art techniques and media, though a series of apprenticeships, including drawing, painting, metal, resin, color theory, and film. Her teachers encouraged a sound classical education, as well as experimentation beyond the boundaries of tradition.
In 1976 she was introduced to digital art through her teacher, Nathaniel Jacobson, a Yale educated Color Theorist and research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab. In 1980 she worked in video as Art Director at the CBS affiliate broadcast television station in Boston. By 1985, she was working professionally with cutting-edge art involving technology. By 2011 she was working exclusively as a digital and new media artist, embracing technology that compliments and enhances the creative process, and blurs the edge between traditional media.
Digital painting is painting with light, on a back-lit screen, forming layers of varying transparency, and creating a virtual three dimensional image. When the layers are merged, and the image is complete, it is translated to a final substrate, such as resin, metal, canvas or paper, using archival pigments suspended in a medium. This allows the digital painting to be viewed within a contemplative personal space or gallery.
Although technically complex, the results appear effortless, unique, and often surprising.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST
The symbiotic relationship between Master and Apprentice is one of the oldest ways of learning known. The Master Artist spends a lifetime experimenting with materials and pushing the inspirational envelope. For the Master, the consummation of a complete creative life is to pass on this experience of hard earned techniques and become the source of inspiration to their chosen apprentice. With this education and the emotional support of the Master, the Apprentice sets forth to create a new fresh body of work.
The artist was trained by dedicated, talented artists in a variety of traditional disciplines and encouraged to investigate virtually every artistic medium. Her first teacher, her mother, graduated, then taught at the Rhode Island School of Design for more than 20 years. As soon as the artist could hold a pencil, she was instructed in drawing and design, and when she was older, was taught to work with metal.
Her mother introduced her to Rhode Island painter and gallerist, Eugene Tonoff, also a graduate of RISD, where she continued drawing and painting with acrylics. Under his full time instruction, she began experimenting with dimensional resins, which combined painting with sculptural three dimensional shapes. At his suggestion, she took courses in film making at RISD and graphic design at Brown University. The artist was also instructed and assisted in gallery management and artist/collector relations.
The artist’s third teacher, Nathaniel Jacobson, was a Yale fine art graduate, who studied under Anne Hathaway, disciple of the renowned color theorist, Albert H. Munsell. He was the founder and Director of the Art Student’s Workshop in Boston, painter, installation/muralist, color theorist, lecturer and research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab. Gloria Merritt worked with Mr. Jacobson as his Studio Assistant in Brookline Village MA.
The artist spent many years working in marketing and advertising as an award winning Senior Art Director at Wilson, Haight & Welch, the largest advertising agency in New England at that time. After leaving, she worked as a freelance Art Director for special projects and campaigns at many of the other largest agencies. She formed King Advertising and Design and managed clients such as General Electric Jet Engines for collateral and print advertising, Digital Equipment collateral design, Shawmut Bank special corporate projects and promotion, Chancellor Corporation and Chancellor Fleet Leasing annual reports, collateral and advertising.
More than 30 years ago, video began to replace film in broadcast television. Under contract as the Art Director at the CBS Network Affiliate in Boston, the artist was able to learn and experiment professionally with state-of-the-art video technology as a medium, as both Art Director and Producer/Director. She was the co-founder of the Boston based, MasterMedia® with her husband, an award winning broadcast television Producer, Writer and Journalist. MasterMedia's clients have included Fortune 100 and international corporations. MasterMedia has proven experience solving unique marketing and communication problems, working directly with key top management, to take rapid advantage of new opportunities, and retain an overview across multiple media platforms, under high pressure and time sensitive conditions. MasterMedia®
REPRESENTATION
Alessandro Berni Gallery, New York City USA
Vermont Arts Gallery, Vermont USA
EXHIBITION HISTORY
Solo Exhibitions
New London Hospital, New London NH, Sept – Dec 2018
“Take Flight”, 2017
“Painting with Light”, Oct 2015 – Jan 2017
Solo Exhibition at the Williamson Gallery
Williamson Translational Research Building
at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon NH
“Digital Artist in the New Century”, 2014
Rotunda Gallery,
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon NH
Eastern Bank, 2014
One Broadway, Cambridge MA
Neiman Marcus, Nov 2013 – Jan 2014
Boylston Street Main Entrance, Copley Place, Boston MA
Liberty Hotel, 2014 and 2013
Charles Street, Beacon Hill, Boston MA
THE DIGITAL EVOLUTION at The Great Hall, 2013
"Changing Gears", a solo exhibition of new works of digital painting by Gloria King Merritt at
"The Great Hall", 100 River Street, Springfield VT.
This was the first solo exhibition at the spectacular 6,000 square foot gallery space on the Black River that had been transformed into the newest and largest public art venue in Vermont.
Orson Wells Gallery, 1972
Harvard Square, Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA
Tonoff Gallery, 1968
Peck Street, Providence RI
Group Exhibitions
"NewMediaArt", Oct 2018
Group of three artists at the University Place Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
“Born Digital: Artists as Innovators” Jun 2018
Group of three digital artists at Galatea Fine Arts gallery at SOWA, Harrison Avenue, Boston MA
“Solar” Digital Sculpture/Painting on Resin, 2016, 16' x 4'
On exhibition at the Bundy Modern and Sculpture Garden, Waitsfield VT
The London Group Open 2017
The Cello Factory 33-34 Cornwall Road, London
Helen Day Gallery, Stowe VT, Group Exhibition, Dec 2017
Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester VT, Group Exhibition, Nov – Dec 2017
Curator and Artist Exhibitor for the:
“Summer Celebration” at VermontArts.Gallery, Jul 1 – Sep 30, 2017
Group Exhibition of Digital Art
Wally Gilbert, Nobel Prize winner, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, and Digital Artist
Anne Morgan Spalter initiated and taught the first new media course at the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University and wrote the textbook, “The Computer in Visual Arts”.
Gloria King Merritt, Digital Painter and Exhibition Curator
Dorothy Amore Pilla, former Director of the Art Education Program at Tufts University and the School for The Museum of Fine Arts, which is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
SEABA Gallery, 25th Anniversary of the Art HOP, Burlington VT, 2017
Selected by Asya Geisberg, Asya Geisberg Gallery, NYC
“Mary Schein Salon”, Katheryn Schultz Gallery, Sep 2017
Group Exhibition
Cambridge MA
University Place Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA, 2017
“National Prize Show”, Cambridge Art Association
Galatea Fine Arts Gallery, Aug 2017
Group exhibition, The New England Collective VIII,
SOWA, Harrison Avenue, Boston MA
“White/Black/Monotone” Bancroft Gallery, South Shore Art, Cohasset MA, 2017
Award Winner, “Tidal Moon” by Gloria King Merritt
Selected by Beth Urdang, Urdang Gallery, SOWA Boston MA
RED Biennial, 2016
Kathryn Schultz Gallery
“Solar Wind”, by Gloria King Merritt, Moving Painting on Video
Lowell St., Cambridge MA
Selected by Joseph D. Ketner II is the Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art Theory
and Practice at Emerson College, Boston.
Bundy Modern Gallery and Sculpture Garden, 2016
Waitsfield VT
Boston Biennial 4, 2016
Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston MA
NHIA Biennial, 2015
New Hampshire Institute of Art
Katheryn Schultz Gallery, 2015
Lowell Street, Cambridge MA
Norris Cotton Cancer Center, 2015
1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon NH
"CAA 70" 2015
University Place Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
Retrospective Exhibition of Award Winners to Celebrate the
Cambridge Art Association 70th Anniversary / By invitation
"Sublime Intuition" 2015
Dillon Gallery at the South Shore Art Center
By invitation to Gloria King Merritt
Group Exhibition of Four Gallery Artists
"Journeys", South Shore Art Center 2015
Selected by Zola Solamente, Arden Gallery, Newbury St. Boston MA
Mayor's Gallery at Boston City Hall, 2014
“The World We Live In”
Group exhibition by invitation
70th Member’s Prize Show, 2014
University Place Gallery/Harvard Square
Mt. Auburn St, Cambridge MA
Cambridge Art Assoc.
Selected by Al Miner, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
South Shore Art Center, 2014
Cohasset MA
National “Works on Paper”, 2014
Selected by Al Miner, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Masterpiece Gallery at the Boston Design Center, 2014
By invitation; Keith Whitmore, Director
"More Human" COLLISION collective, 2014
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
Curated by William Tremblay
Artwork: “Selfie, Portrait of the Artist – How hot are you?”, Infrared Photography
Norris Cotton Cancer Center, 2014
1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon NH
University Place Gallery, 2013
69th Member's Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association
Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
Selected by Kate McNamara, Director and Chief Curator at Boston University Art Gallery
University Place Gallery, 2012
BLUE, Cambridge Art Association
Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
Selected by Joseph Thompson, Director, Mass MoCA, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
University Place Gallery, 2012
68th Annual Fall Salon
Winner of the "Mary Schein Award"
Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA
University Place Gallery, 2012
11th National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association
Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
Selected by Clara Kim, Senior Curator of Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN
Electron Salon, LACDA Gallery, 2012
Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles CA
By invitation; Rex Bruce, Director
The Artcomplex Center of Tokyo, 2009
Tokyo, Japan
Lincoln-Bond Gallery, 2008
Woodstock VT
Selected by Adrian Tans
Award winner: ”Frozen in Time”, resin sculpture
Providence Art Club, 1970
Providence RI
"The Subject is Nude"
Selected by Hilton Kramer, Art Critic, New York Times
Wickford Art Show, 1970
Wickford RI
Best in Show
Bibliography (selected)
NewMedia.INTERNATIONAL
Feature Article
ARTSCOPE Magazine
Feature Article / Artist Spotlight
“Making Lemonade in Vermont. Gloria King Merritt's Happy Accident”
Jul - Aug 2016 Issue
ARTSCOPE Magazine
Featured Centerfold, “Steel and Glass” by Gloria King Merritt
Nov – Dec 2014 Issue
“Digital Artist in the New Century”
By Gloria King Merritt
Published by New Media Access, 2013
Local Permanent Collections (selected)
Williamson Translational Research Building
On permanent display in the Entrance Atrium to the right of the Main Rotunda
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, One Medical Center Drive, Lebanon NH
"Chrysopoeia", 2015, 32' x 4' Digital painting embedded in heat formed resin
"Butterfly Effect – Transformation", 2014, 72” x 32” Signed original digital painting on canvas
"Copper Threads", 2014, 96” x 32” Signed original digital painting on canvas
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
On permanent display at entrance to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
"Pulse, Rhythm and Song" 2015, 13' x 4', Triptych, Signed original digital painting on canvas
Speaking Engagements (selected)
2018 - "NewMediaArt", panel and public discussion on the history of New Media Art
University Place Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
2017 - "Painting with Light" Artist Talk on Digital Art by Gloria King Merritt
Williamson Translational Research Building at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Auditorium A
2017 - Speaker at “Perspectives”, Hosted by Dr. Robert Santulli, Honorary Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Geisel School of Medicine, held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “Perspectives” facilitates conversations based on works of art for persons with cognitive disorders and their care partners.
2014 - Speaker at Boston Cyberarts Gallery, sponsored by Art Technology New England, in connection with a discussion of “More Human”"More Human" COLLISION collective, curated by William Tremblay.