The Daily Muse: Kerry Vander Meer, Mixed Media Artist and Printmaker

Kerry Vander Meer completed her MFA in sculpture from Mills College. Her talents, however, also extend into the realms of painting, printmaking, mixed media, installation, and performance art. Not only has Vander Meer exhibited and taught extensively throughout Northern California, she has also exhibited in New York, Seattle, Chicago, Santa Fe, as well as numerous galleries and museums across the country. Her works appear in collections in U.S., Germany, Spain, Ireland and Japan. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including artist-in-residency awards at the Cill Rialaig Project in Ireland, Millay Colony in Upstate New York, Villa Montalvo in Santa Clara, California, and Foundation Valpariso in Spain.
While in Ireland, Vander Meer designed a community project called Beir Mo Bheannache Chucu (Remember Me to Them) that brought together hundreds of people and involved the construction of over two hundred fabric and paper boats, each representing the families that migrated from the Iveragh Peninsula over the past 150 years. After returning to California, Vander Meer sewed the boats together to form a large Celtic cross which she exhibited, suspended from a ceiling, at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.

In addition to exploring migrations, Vander Meer’s content-rich art deals with such issues as the environment and the effect of the media on body image. Over four years she developed a body of work titled “Hardly There” about Vanishing Amphibians as a way to investigate endangered species and our planet.

Vander Meer’s work has been praised by influential critic Lucy Lippard, and is included in many books and publications such as Artweek, San Francisco Focus, New York Times, and The Oakland Tribune.

She taught art and yoga for 14 years at Creative Growth, an art center that serves adults with disabilities . She currently teaches monotype and mixed media workshops in Oakland and Mexico and has been studying Iyengar yoga for over 25 years.