Tim Merrick
Tim Merrick’s work focuses on knowledge and how we perceive it. Working with the ideas of furniture as metaphor, Merrick’s work has evolved out of the study of Wonderkameras”. These Natural History Cabinets and Cabinets of Curiosities were examples of different modes of attaining knowledge during the Age of Enlightenment. His first pieces are conceptionally simple; the viewer opens and closes drawers and looks behind doors. Some of the contents function like paintings (they are two-dimensional), others are more like sculpture. Merrick’s most recent project, Language-arts speaks of the crossroads where images become language. Merrick uses imagery from the 1930’s children’s picture dictionary and rubber stamp collection combined with sculptures that resemble objects in a school room, chalk boards, a school desk and coat racks.