In conjunction with PrintAustin 2014, Yard Dog is showing the work of printmaker Deborah Mersky.
Deborah Mersky grew up in Austin, Texas, lived in Seattle for many years, and now lives near Johnson City, TX. She earned an MFA at the University of Washington and has been exhibiting her work since 1980. For her prints, she carves a design in a clay block, prints in black ink on Japanese paper, then paints over that with gouache. Her collages incorporate animal and plant remains scavenged from the countryside. As a public artist, she creates elaborate, large-scale installations executed in such materials as glass and metal and integrated into buildings. In Austin she designed the metal fencing along the sidewalk on the north end of the 1st Street Bridge over Lady Bird Lake. Both her public and studio works are informed by the natural world, with natural elements removed from their original contexts and rearranged to create patterns.