Megan Wilson

Megan Wilson
Wilson in 2014
Born	Billings, Montana
Nationality	American
Education	MFA San Francisco Art Institute, BFA University of Oregon
Known for	Street Art, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Public Art, Quilling
Awards	Gunk Foundation, Artadia, Asian Cultural Council, The San Francisco Foundation, Ford Foundation, Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series, San Francisco Art Commission Individual Artist Award, Zellerbach Family Foundation

Megan Wilson is an American visual artist, writer, and activist based in San Francisco. Known for her large-scale installations, public projects, and street art, she incorporates a broad range of pop culture methodologies and aesthetics to address conceptual interests that include home, homelessness, social and economic justice, anti-capitalism, impermanence and generosity. Wilson has been a practitioner of Buddhism and Vipassanā meditation since 2003, often interweaving these practices into her work.

Biography

Megan Wilson was born and raised in Montana. Her father was an oil and gas attorney and partner with the Crowley, Haughey, Hanson, Toole and Dietrich firm in Billings, Montana for over 30 years until he left in 2002 to serve as Carbon County Attorney prior to his death in 2008. Her mother is Canadian and works as an ophthalmic technician. Prior to Montana, Wilson’s parents lived in San Francisco in the sixties where her father clerked for Judge James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Wilson moved out at the age of 16 and worked at Burger King her senior year of high school to support herself.^[1] She received her BFA from the University of Oregon in 1992 and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts.

Projects

Better Homes & Gardens Today

Wilson and collaborator Christopher Statton launched the public project Better Homes & Gardens Today in fall 2014, creating a limited edition of 300 pairs of hand-painted signs with the word “Home” in different languages accompanied by a flower. Wilson and Statton state the project’s goals to: “1) Heighten awareness around 'home' and the realities of homelessness; 2) Cultivate a dialog within communities and amongst disparate groups – especially with those in the tech sector who are having a significant impact on housing instability in the Bay Area - about the funding and policy change that is needed to help end homelessness; and 3) To raise money to benefit the Gubbio Project, the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, and At The Crossroads, organizations working to address homelessness in San Francisco.”^[2]

Better Homes & Gardens Today is an extension of Wilson’s project Better Homes & Gardens from 2000 through which she gave 250 of the signs out for free to the homeless and those facing eviction in San Francisco during the area’s first Dot-com bubble. The project is included in the book San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 75 Years of Looking Forward,^[3] and in the exhibition Fertile Ground at the Oakland Museum in 2014/15.

Clarion Alley Mural Project

Wilson has been a primary organizer and curator of the volunteer-run collective Clarion Alley Mural Project since 1998. As part of the project she’s painted five murals on the alley: Home/Casa (2000), featured in the book Street Art San Francisco Mission Muralismo edited by Annice Jacoby; CAPITALISM IS OVER! If You Want It (2011), featured in the book Street Messages by Nicholas Ganz; TAX THE RICH (2013), also featured in the book Street Messages, Viva La Tamale Lady (2013), a collaboration with Jet Martinez, and The Wall of Shame & Solutions (2014), a collaboration with Christopher Statton and Mike Reger to call out San Francisco's city government officials on policies impacting the city's changing character.

Wilson’s mural CAPITALISM IS OVER! If You Want It was used without the artist’s permission in the film About Cherry, directed by Stephen Elliott (author), starring Ashley Hinshaw and James Franco.^[4]

CAPITALISM IS OVER! If You Want It

Wilson co-founded (with Amy Berk, Andy Cox, Cheryl Meeker, Eliza Barrios, and Maw Shein Win) Capitalism Is Over! If Your Want It, a collective of artists from around the world who have created artistic actions in response to the impact of capitalism on the global economy.^[5]

Home 1996-2008

Inspired in part by artist David Ireland (artist), Wilson transformed her home from 2004 - 2008 into an installation that she opened up to the public in 2008 that included a series of dinner salons, curated events, and public video projections.^[6]

Sama-Sama/Together

Wilson curated, directed, and raised the funds for Sama-Sama/Together, the first international mural exchange between artists in the United States (San Francisco) and Yogyakarta Indonesia. Wilson co-organized the project with Apotik Komik of Indonesia and Intersection for the Arts. Artists from San Francisco included: Aaron Noble, Alicia McCarthy, Andrew Schoultz, Carolyn Castaño, Carolyn Ryder Cooley, and Wilson. Artists from Indonesia included: Arie Dyanto, Arya Panjalu, Nano Warsono, and Samuel Indratma. The project was the catalyst for the mural and graffiti movement in Yogyakarta. The San Francisco Bay Guardian awarded the project “The Best Transnational Art Undertaking” in 2004.

Flower Interruption

In 2002/03 Wilson launched a four-part public installation series through which she filled traffic intersections in San Francisco, Tokyo, Yogyakarta and Ubud Indonesia with giant “Technicolor flowers” that passersby were invited to take for free.

Non-Traditional Mural Installations

Wilson has created a series of non-traditional mural installations using textiles and quilling at venues including the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Idaho, Thirtyninehotel in Honolulu, HI, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco. She is one of the first artists to use quilling as a contemporary art form outside of its historical use as a decorative craft on paper or household objects.^[7]

"Tax The Rich" by Megan Wilson on Clarion Alley, San Francisco

Exhibitions

Wilson’s work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum, Museum of Craft and Folk Art (S.F.), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Southern Exposure (art space), Montalvo Art Center, Intersection for the Arts, The Luggage Store, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Sun Valley Center for the Arts (ID), Stephen Wirtz Gallery (S.F.) Tinlark Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) thirtyninehotel(Honolulu, HI), Green Papaya (Manila), Print It! (Barcelona), and LIP (Yogyakarta). She has created public projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tokyo, Japan; Yogyakarta & Bali, Indonesia; Jaipur, India, and Manila Philippines.

Publications

Wilson’s work is included in FRESH 1: Cutting Edge Illustrations in 3D and FRESH 2: Cutting Edge Illustrations in Public edited by Slanted; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 75 Years of Looking Forward, edited by Janet Bishop, Corey Keller, Sarah Roberts; Street Art San Francisco Mission Muralismo, edited by Annice Jacoby; Mural Art: Murals on Huge Public Surfaces Around the World by Kirakoss Iosifidis; Illustration: Play - Craving for the Extraordinary, Published by Victionary; Sama-Sama/Together: An International Exchange Project Between Yogyakarta and San Francisco, Published by Jam Karet; and The Gallery at Villa Montalvo: Selected Exhibitions from 1996-2000, edited by Theres Rohan. Wilson's work is featured in the book Street Messages by Nicholas Ganz that will be published in April 2015 by Dokument Press.

Published Writings

Wilson is also a writer and art critic. She co-founded the San Francisco based arts Website www.stretcher.org. She was an art writer for the San Francisco Bay Guardian 2000 - 2001. Her writings have appeared in stretcher.org, afterimage, Digitalcity, Public Art Review, and Art Practical; in the book Street Art San Francisco Mission Muralismo (edited by Annice Jacoby with Forward by Carlos Santana); and in Reimagine: The National Journal About Race, Poverty, and the Environment.

Activism

Wilson has been one of the core organizers active in the response to San Francisco's economic and technology booms 1999 - present. In 2000, she co-organized the project Art Strikes Back with Lise Swenson, an 8-week series of performances along the Valencia corridor in San Francisco's Mission District.^[8] In 2014 she called out University of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism's project "Mission Loc@l" for disrespecting the wishes of artists involved with the Clarion Alley Mural Project by selecting an image of the Alley for their contest to decorate the highly contested "tech buses" that use the city's public bus stops.^[9] The winning artist, Elinor Diamond, ultimately withdrew the image and submitted a new one. Wilson and artists Christopher Statton, and Mike Reger created the mural Wall of Shame & Solutions on the Clarion Alley to call out San Francisco's city government officials on policies impacting the city's changing character.^[10] Wilson’s essay “The Gentrification of Our Livelihoods” published on Stretcher.org in June 2014 and in Reimagine: The National Journal About Race, Poverty, and the Environment in December 2014, looks at the impact that public-private partnerships between arts organizations, developers, and funders have had on the arts and greater communities of San Francisco.^[11]

Personal

Wilson currently lives in San Francisco with her partner and sometime collaborator Christopher Statton.

References

External links

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