Linn Meyers (born 1968), known professionally as linn meyers, is a visual artist based in Washington, DC and Los Angeles.Campello, F. Lennox. 100 Artists of Washington, D.C., Schiffer Publishing, 2011. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Anderson, John. "Hirshhorn unveils a wall of Meyers artwork," The Washington Times, May 15, 2016. Retrieved August 2, 2024. She is known for dense, intricate drawings, paintings, installations and prints that range in scale from page-sized images to large pieces on Mylar and panel to monumental, site-specific wall works.Amirkhani, Jordan. "As Nature and Bodies Do: linn meyers's Graph Paper Drawings," The Art Journal, March 2020.Jenkins, Mark. "A sweeping riff on the circle at the Hirshhorn," The Washington Post, September 3, 2016. Retrieved August 2, 2024. Her art is rooted in a process of repetitive drawing—thousands of hand-drawn marks that come together to form rhythmic, patterned wholes and serve as records of their own making.Mansky, Jackie. "Museum Visitors Can Play This Wall Art Like an Instrument," Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2024.Capps, Kriston. "360-Degree Wall Drawing by D.C. Artist Linn Meyers," Washington City Paper, February 11, 2016. Retrieved August 2, 2024.Freestone, Jenny. linn meyers: Drawing Lines, Painting Dots," On Paper, Spring 2019. While ostensibly abstract, her works are also widely suggestive of natural phenomena and fundamental aspects of the universe, from fingerprints to galaxies, and cellular patterns to tidal waves.Ellegood, Anne. "Hammer Projects: Linn Meyers," Hammer Museum, 2011. Retrieved August 2, 2024. Curator Anne Ellegood observed, "She is after a purity of making—a physical process that does not hide behind illusionism—a directness wherein the materiality of the work is evident and … all the mystery is removed so that it is what it is."
Meyers has created site-specific wall drawings at cultural institutions including the Hammer Museum,Buckley, Annie. "Linn Meyers," Artforum, October 2011. Retrieved August 2, 2024. The Phillips Collection,Padua, Pat. "Linn Meyers @ The Phillips Collection," DCist, July 30, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2024. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Columbus Museum (Georgia). She has also exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Kreeger Museum and Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.Hartley, Katie. "Sitting in Uncertainty," Bmore Art, May 19, 2022. Retrieved August 2, 2024.Capps, Kriston. "At the Kreeger, even a modest museum can contain great depths," The Washington Post, July 3, 2024. Retrieved August 2, 2024. Her work belongs to the public collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art and The Phillips Collection, among others.Smithsonian American Art Museum. Untitled, Linn Meyers, Collection. Retrieved August 2, 2024.The British Museum. Linn Meyers, Collection. Retrieved August 2, 2024.National Gallery of Art. Linn Meyers, Collection. Retrieved August 2, 2024.The Phillips Collection. Linn Meyers, Collection. Retrieved August 2, 2024. In 2023, Meyers received the Anonymous Was a Woman Award.Duron, Maximiiano. "Anonymous Was A Woman Names 2023 Winners," ARTnews December 14, 2023. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Anonymous Was A Woman. Recipients 2023. Retrieved August 2, 2024.
Early life and career Meyers was born in 1968 in Washington, DC and grew up in the DC area.Hammer Museum. "Hammer Projects: Linn Meyers," Exhibitions. Retrieved August 2, 2024. After graduating high school, she lived for a year in Paris, France before moving to New York City to enroll at The Cooper Union.Smith, Brendan. "A Circle of Lines Fills the Hirshhorn," Bmore Art, June 5, 2016. Retrieved August 2, 2024. She completed a BFA in 1990, then moved to Oakland, California to attend the California College of the Arts where she earned an MFA in 1993.Academy Art Museum. "Abstraction: Landscapes and Otherscapes," Exhibitions. Retrieved August 2, 2024. During her first professional decade, Meyers lived in New York City, New Haven, CT, North Carolina and Pittsburgh before returning to her native Washington in 2002.Genocchio, Benjamin. "For a Few Days, New Haven Artists Give Up the Hermit's Life," The New York Times, October 12, 2003. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Battista, Carolyn. "The View From/New Haven; Opening the Doors On Art Workspaces," The New York Times, May 10, 1998. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
In her early career, Meyers largely focused on landscape-based paintings that moved from ambiguously referential studies in tone and atmosphere to more abstract pieces in which loosely gridded brushstrokes created elusive, pulsing spaces.Harrison, Helen A. "Landscapes of Mind and Nature," The New York Times, February 2, 1997. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Dawson, Jessica. "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," Washington City Paper, February 25, 2000. Retrieved August 5, 2024. After turning to more drawing-based work in the early 2000s, she began receiving recognition for solo exhibitions at Gallery Joe (Philadelphia),Sozanski, Edward J. "Linn Meyers at Gallery Joe," The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 29, 2002. The Frick Pittsburgh,Thomas, Mary. "Meditative Markings," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 15, 2003. the New Britain Museum of American ArtThomas, B. "Portrait of an Artist: Linn Meyers," Provincetown Magazine, July 24, 2003. and G Fine Art (Washington).Wennerstrom, Nord. "Linn Meyers," Artrorum, November 7, 2005. Retrieved August 2, 2024.
Work and reception Meyers's creative process relies equally on a meticulous, rigorous focus and an intuitive approach open to tiny slippages and imperfections of the human hand that take her compositions in unforeseen directions. Much of her work began with single flowing lines tracing predetermined frameworks of circles or simple gestures, which defined the direction in which each image evolved. Working without templates or tape, she then laid down successive strokes of acrylic ink, paint, pen or marker following the contours of the prior mark as if drafting a topographical chart. Each mark was a direct response building on the last, forming densely packed patterns in which inadvertent skips, bends and variations accumulate like the ripples of pebbles in a pond or ancient tree cross-sections.Washington City Paper. "Linn Meyers: No Time Like the Present," September 13, 2007. Retrieved August 5, 2024.The Washington Post. "A Persuasive Thought of Line," December 9, 2007. Describing the process, Artforum critic Annie Buckley wrote, "Meyers's drawing magnifies the scope and intensity of singular marks through expansive patternmaking; taken together, the lines appear to pulsate, embodying both the physicality of her process and that of the space."
Some observers link Meyers's approach to Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt in its attention to systematic structure and formal considerations, or to Vija Celmins due to its suggestions of natural phenomena.McNatt, Glenn. "Contemporary drawing values meticulous mark-making," The Baltimore Sun, January 24, 2007. Retrieved August 5, 2024. At a deeper level, however, critics contend that her works function like maps of time and space, evoking processes rather than things, and most concretely, serve as records of physical movement and their own becoming. In this sense, her work has an affinity to Jackson Pollock's form of mark-making as a trace or index of an event—a mode that shifts it from the purely abstract toward something approaching narrative or even realism.
Meyers's site-specific wall drawings enhance and magnify certain aspects of her overall work: its physicality, directness of materials, use of entropy, and themes of endurance, contemplation and impermanence.Cohen, Alina. "These Women Artists Are Transforming Gallery Walls With Incredible Murals," Artsy, February 19, 2019. Retrieved August 5, 2024. She creates them line by line in on-site over the course of days, weeks or months, often with spectators witnessing the effort and unfolding of the work.Glusker, Anne. "The Mesmerizing Results When a Museum Asks an Artist to Draw All Over Its Walls," Smithsonian Magazine, May 24, 2016. Retrieved August 2, 2024. Her unrushed, methodical approach encourages a sense of reflection that runs counter to the increasing speed of contemporary life. Due to the large scale, viewers experience the drawings not just visually but also bodily, as immersive spaces in which they are situated. When an exhibition ends, these works are painted over, the impermanence putting a premium on the experience.
Early drawings, 2001–07 Meyer first produced drawings based on simple, pre-determined systems in the early 2000s. In these works on Mylar, vellum and graph paper, she explored the consequences of a single drawn line that dictated the next. Reviewers likened them to a looser, organic form of minimalism or postminimalism. Artforum'''s Nord Wennerstrom wrote, "time is suspended, and the effect is meditative, blissful, and refreshing"; the Baltimore Sun deemed them "labor-intensive abstract mandalas … [with] a heroic ambition to limn the infinite through mark-making at the limits of perception."
Wall drawings In the latter 2000s, Meyers extended her drawings to large-scale, non-permanent, wall works. She first created them in her studio, then at the University of Maryland Art Gallery (2009), San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (2009) and Katzen Arts Center (2011), among others venues.O'Sullivan, Michael. "Artist Goes Flat-Out to Draw the Viewer In," The Washington Post, February 20, 2009. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Richman, Johnathan. "Temporary Pleasures: Artist Linn Meyers," The Washington Post, February 18, 2009. Retrieved August 5, 2024.Cebulski, Frank. "The Space Between at SJICA," Artweek, June 1, 2008.Capps, Kriston. "Art review: Taking the Katzen roundabout," The Washington Post, February 13, 2011. Retrieved August 2, 2024. The Phillips Collection commissioned a wall drawing in response to one of its van Gogh paintings: at the time being (2010), whose dense web of lines suggested immersion in the brushstrokes of the Dutch artist. This body of work is characterized by its undulating lines, limited color palettes, geometrically delineated areas, and responsiveness to the architecture, color and light of its sites.