Children’s Museum announces Meryl Weber as 2012 Artist in Residence

Image by Photo by Meryl Weber Mosaic by Meryl Weber

The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry honors Meryl Weber a local mosaic artist and retired educator, as the third recipient of the Artist in Residence Program.

Weber will take residence in the Museum’s dedicated Art Room for three months to conduct hands-on workshops, weekly drop-in classes and informal demonstrations for Lowcountry children and their families.Meeting Street Academy, a neighboring school for low income families, will also meet with Weber for weekly workshops.

As a retired Art Teacher and Arts Coordinator, Weber is very excited about interacting and creating with children again.  She plans to create a large scale mosaic installation for the Museum that visitors and members are welcome to contribute to over the next three months.  Weber will also be leading small take home projects and activities for children of all ages to participate in as well.

“As a little girl my mother taught me how to make a mosaic picture out of eggshells broken up into tiny pieces.  Ever since then I’ve been hooked on the idea of taking different kinds of objects, from a Scrabble tile to a shard of broken plate to even a photograph, and piecing these together to create artwork,” says Weber. “The Children’s Museum will give me the opportunity to work with so many different age groups, from pre-schoolers to adults, and I’m eager and energized to introduce them to a new way of looking at objects, combining them, and experiencing mosaics.”

Meryl Weber has been an art educator in South Carolina for 32 years. She has an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and an MAT and MLS from the University of South Carolina. She taught at Edisto Middle School, Moultrie Middle School and Hanahan Elemetary School.  For 18 years she was the Visual Arts Coordinator for Berkeley County School District. She has written numerous grants, including the Magnet School Assistance Program grant that created two arts infused schools in Berkeley County.  She served on the board of the SCAEA in several capacities and received the Supervision/Administration Award and the Distinguished Service to SCAEA Award.  Highlights of her career included Fulbright trips to Japan and to Mexico.  Since retiring, she has traveled to Mexico, Thailand and Taiwan and is hard at work on large installation of ten 6'x9' tile murals.

This project was funded in part by John M. Dunnan Galleries, Gilchrist/Bissell, Wealth Management Group of Morgan Keegan, City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs and the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Program through their joint administration of the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant Program and the South Carolina Arts Commission which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of SC.

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