Meg Dooley is a free-ranging multidisciplinary artist living in McCandless, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, in the house where she grew up.
During her three-year studio residency at Radiant Hall on Pittsburgh's North Side, Meg started painting as a defensive response to the nightmare of Donald Trump's presidency. Listening to books and podcasts kept her mind quiet while she painted. Especially those about math & science concepts that were both intriguing and waaay beyond her understanding: theoretical physics, entropy, cosmology, quantum biology, and whatever other imponderables sparked her sense of wonder.
This surprising new curiosity somehow inspired Meg to make topographical (3D) paintings on canvas using acrylics and an eclectic mix of tools and materials. In addition to brushes, blades, rubber stamps, and stencils, she worked with everyday objects like fly swatters, sink strainers, shoes, bubble wrap, artificial flowers, drawer organizers, box tops, jar lids, a pastry cutter… basically, anything she could re-purpose to create an interesting pattern or shape. Together with professional- and craft-grade acrylics, she used glass & metal paints; high-gloss, metallic, florescent, color-resist, plastic & spray paints; leftover house paints; model enamels, gold leaf, foils & inks... all in the spirit of entropic experimentation. Among her collage and topographic materials were dried paint blobs, iron-on image transfers, ink-jet prints, slide-off decal transparencies, rub-off stickers, newspaper clippings, book pages, postage stamps... and so on, per whimsy or intent, ad infinitum.
Meg has no idea how her penchant for leaping down conceptual rabbit holes influences her artistic practice(s).
A leap in 2019 landed her at home, building found-object installations. Her inaugural, on-going project, Things We Meant to Do, was conceived during an attempted house purge that started in the attic, where she exhumed a long-forgotten cache of ancestral ephemera. The discovery launched a multidisciplinary installation series combining found object constructions, scrolling text streams of consciousness, multi-genre audio mash-ups, reconstituted video-art antiquities, dynamic narrative graphics & interactive (re)distribution... so far. Using Ancestry & Legacy as its thematic excuse, Things installations illustrate personal narratives laced with historical, cultural, socio-economic & philosophical significance(s).
Days after Play On opened, the Corona demon chased everyone into protective hibernation and stranded Thing 2 at the Heritage Center until late November. An extended run is usually cause for celebration. In this case, because the Center was closed, few people saw the piece, but it enjoyed free storage.
Thing 1: Down the Drain was at the McCandless Heritage Center November - December, 2019.
Thing 2: Play On was at McCandless Heritage Center March - November, 2020.
The rest of the planned series is cooling its jets in the developmental wings.
While in COVID-driven solitary confinement, Meg turned her living / dining room and enclosed porch into an ersatz studio. She resurrected some old paintings and re-worked them as a series of collaged paintings.
Lost & Found was on display at the Heritage Center from June through August, 2021.
The exhibit's opening events included a hands-on collage-making workshop.
McCandless / Northern Allegheny Heritage Center website: https://www.townofmccandless.org/mccandless-northern-allegheny-heritage-center.