Merrilee Schoen is an trans-disciplinary socially engaged artist residing in the central highlands of Maine. Merrilee firmly believes that everyone has a story worth sharing, and every land formation a narrative. As an artist, she works to offer a frame of preciousness to perceivably unprecious, discarded materials, and a frame of beauty to communities on the societal fringe. Through sculpture Merrilee makes visible- through explicit and abstract means- concepts of social inequalities, resource distribution, emotional dualism and indeterminacy. She explores the space between precarity and resilience through social practice, public works with communities and with material investigation and symbology.

 

Merrilee is the founder for a traveling resource center called the Joy Truck and is currently pursuing her MFA in Intermedia at the University of Maine at Orono. Re-use and barter are a few of her favorite things.