Grunthal artist to display night sky in first exhibit

Grunthal artist Merrill Clark has always loved the night sky and with her new exhibit, In The Night Sky, she is capturing the nebulas, galaxies, and stars in her art.

“My inspiration is certainly my husband and…we lived in the city and you have to drive a little ways to get that nice dark sky and we’d go out at 3 a.m. and we’d pick up my parents who are in their 80s and we’d drive to the middle of nowhere so we could put the lawn chairs out and sit back and enjoy the show, whether it was a meteorite shower or an eclipse. That again is where I got my inspiration. My husband is an astrophotographer. With his telescope you can get much better detail than you can with the naked eye, but those were some pretty fun outings,” said Clark.

At first Clark started her art by beading, eventually moving on to gold and silver jewelry with semi-precious stones. When the price of gold and silver made it too expensive to work with, she turned to resin. In resin, she found herself without limitations having made pyramids, then she moved on to wall hangings then to furniture and even counter tops.

“There’s no stopping me!” she said with a laugh.

“What I love about (working in resin) is that you can, depending on how you’re colouring it and what additives you’re putting into the resin, they all create unique (patterns) and interact with the resin differently to create completely unique colour patterns and designs and forms…And you can never recreate it which sometimes is unfortunate but that’s a part of the fun too is that every piece I make just goes in its own direction. It’s always something different.”

Clark’s been making her art since she retired in 2015 when she retired as a financial planner.

“I go right brained and everything else disappears while I focus on my art and I think that’s really what art should be. People should be able to get whatever their medium, whatever they choose to express themselves creatively, if they’re not getting lost in their work when they’re focusing on a piece, then it’s not the medium for them.”

For In the Night Sky, Clark will feature 26 pieces of hanging art and 40 pyramids along with possibly some furniture. This is Clark’s first show and she said it’s “a little nerve wracking.”

“Friends and family have always been supportive but when your art starts to reach beyond that, some people will like it, some don’t. I like to share it and I hope people appreciate what I put into it and I hope they see what I see in my art.”

In the Night Sky will premiere on April 11 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hall Gallery at the Steinbach Cultural Arts Centre.