Emmett Merrill: Small Risograph Prints

Emmett Merrill (Born 1993, Kansas City, MO) received his MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2020. He manages the lithography studio at Grafik House, a fine art printmaking studio and co-operative located in downtown, St. Louis, MO. His prints can be found in the public collections of the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, as well as the Guanlan Printmaking Museum. In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at Monaco USA, Buckham Gallery, Wonderfair and the Sheldon Arts Center. 

The works are a series of visual ghost stories, each, in part, exploring the theme of the nature colliding with human made spaces, like a deer bursting through the windshield of a car. Nature in this case, isn’t just the idea of foliage, animals, or wide open landscapes, but also the presence of death. Through out the series, ghosts are also personified as geese crashing into a bathroom window, a figure with mismatched socks under a sheet, as well as mysterious footsteps in the snow, walking away from someone who’s slipped beneath the ice.

"I think ghost stories are an exploration of the uneasy feeling of the unknown, not just the cliche of not feeling alone in a dark room, but also the excitement and anxiety of entering an unfamiliar building, landscape, town etc."