This spring HEDGE is ecstatic to feature a two woman exhibition featuring Meryl Engler and Rita Montlack. Their artistic voices converge through reduction woodcut prints, photography and installations, on view March 19- April 26.

Sharing the processes of sorting, layering and careful color selection, these artists create distinct imagery that interprets our ever changing world. They alter their subject matters with meticulous methods to create enchanting, even surrealist works on paper.

Engler describes her process, “Carving and printing are cathartic acts that require the full presence of self. I think of my reduction woodcuts almost like watercolor, printing translucent layers of color that mix on paper. The result is physical, subtle, and bold.” Meryl pushes the limits of printmaking with her larger than life woodcuts, chronicling landscapes and human presence in our environment. She will be showing a variety of new prints at HEDGE in her show titled, The Constant Urge to Walk All Night.

Meryl grew up in California, but moved to New York to attend Syracuse University where she received her BFA in sculpture and religious studies. She received her MFA in printmaking from the University of Nebraska and moved to Northeast Ohio where she worked as the artist-in-residence manager at the Morgan Conservatory and is currently working as adjunct faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Montlack’s work has been seen in numerous exhibits and public spaces throughout Northeast Ohio, most recently at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Florida and Kent State University’s Dixie Lee Davis Museum Store. Her recent obsession with Artificial Intelligence has taken her work in new, unorthodox directions. She explains, “The title of my show, AI: Artificial Insanity, addresses the issues of intelligence combined with the question of insanity. I mimic this concept in the contemplation and creation of my work; taking real photographs, then digitally manipulating them until they become surreal. I love taking things out of context and placing them where they don't belong to make combinations of strange bedfellows.”

Montlack received her BA from the University of Miami and then studied painting and design at The Cleveland Institute of Art and photography at Cuyahoga Community College. She currently works as a full time artist in Cleveland where she has served on boards of the Contemporary Art Society, Nova and the Ingenuity Festival.