Meclina, painter, calligrapher, and micrographer
How she creates her stunning paintings that use words to define lines, and the power of art to heal and bring a community together.
The Beacon Gallery in Boston’s South End features Art Therapy, a show of work by Meclina and Amy Ford. It’s open until October 30, 2022. Amy Ford’s bold, large-scale paintings celebrate female forms and relationships and pair well with Meclina’s feminine warriors.
As the daughter of a calligrapher, I have often seen text used within art to define features, but this was the first time I had seen it done in such an artful way, with layering of color swaths and some words readable and some quite subtle. Here’s what I learned about how Meclina came to this art form.
Meclina’s path toward becoming a successful full-time artist has had its twists and turns yet makes complete sense. As a child, she sat on the floor drawing during her father’s seminary classes. Her high school art class was an environment for exploration, where she first used words as a prominent way to define her art. After college she put her own art aside to focus on art therapy for children and teenage girls in Boston, and then went on to learn the business of art while working at an art gallery in Washington, DC.
It wasn’t until she was pregnant with her second child and on bedrest that she began making art again, prompted by a friend with an art gallery who wanted to offer a show of Meclina’s unique pieces that combine abstract and figurative art and text, known as micrography or microcalligraphy. That show led to more shows, her pieces appearing prominently in the home of one of the stars of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” an artist in residence role at an unexpected venue, and the launch of a public art nonprofit during the pandemic.
Meclina is excited and grateful for the way her art journey has unfolded. She says, “I love that the art I get to create is taking me on adventures I never knew I needed. I have met people I never knew I would love so deeply and dearly. I’ve had some of the most profound experiences of healing and recovery through my art. It is truly visual medicine for me. I feel quite honored to be who I am right now.”
The Beacon Gallery is featuring Art Therapy, a show of your work and that of Amy Ford. Tell me more about it.
I must pay homage to Christina O’Donnell, owner of Beacon Gallery. She recognized that Amy Ford and I were both working in the same vibrational space of how we create work. For both of us, our process is about being in a meditative state and not thinking about the laundry or any of the other things that are happening in our daily life. We are in the vibration of creation. There’s a sense of play that comes with that, which we both lean-in toward. It becomes the foundational infrastructure of what art therapy is.
Your art includes micrography. Can you tell us about that?
I was drawn to this idea of using words to create imagery and that there’s a play on the macro and the micro. Macro is the image you see from a distance and that image draws you in. As you get closer, what you notice is that cross-hatching. You ask yourself if there is something to decipher further in those different lines. Maybe you see a letter or a word.
Micrography came out of ancient history. Hebrew scribes used it in the Torah and in wedding contracts with a ram or a flower composed of Hebrew. Moorish and Arabic architecture has included Arabic writing that was like a prayer inscribed on doorway thresholds, leaving an architectural footprint.
When did you start incorporating words and text into your art?
I was 15 years old and seeing protests in South Africa during apartheid and the Rodney King riots. Being a brown girl in a small white town [Carver, MA], I had a lot of feelings I was processing and wanted to share, but there wasn’t really an audience.
I used a high school art class calligraphy assignment to create a portrait of a young black girl with her face and hair shown with calligraphy work. There were parts of her locks where I could pour out my heart and be transparent and vulnerable through what I was writing. But I did it in a way that people wouldn’t necessarily be able to read all of it.
I was intentional about what I wrote in the spaces where I knew people could be able to decipher the words. It was one of those aha moments where I could have a cathartic and therapeutic experience that would also be visually impactful. It won an honorable mention at a juried show at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton. Then I put the art form down for a while.
What is your process for creating a piece? Do the words come to you as you are creating? Do you start with an idea?
It starts as a theme that I continue to build on. Woven In is in the gallery and part of a much larger series called Warrior in a Gown. This idea came to me from working with an amazing interior designer in Atlanta, Eddie Brumbaugh. She brought me in to meet one of her celebrity clients, Kandi Burruss, who was preparing to launch the reality TV show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
I sat down with Kandi and asked, “What are you moving toward in your life?” She shared her story of her resilience and I said, “We women, it’s amazing how we can put on a gown, and it hides our scars and all of the things we’ve endured, and we just glide right through and figure out how to slay dragons in our heels.” And she said, “Oh my god, that’s the piece! That’s what I want!”
I asked Kandi, “Who are you in your life?” And she said, “I’m the Queen Bee. I have to make sure I’m taking care of my ecosystem. I’m a single mother, I have a mom to take care of, and I’m running a company.” That was my first Warrior in a Gown piece, and it was called Queen Bee and I put some of her words into that piece.
I ended up creating work for pretty much her whole first floor. Some pieces have become very iconic for her, such as an abstract gown piece and the living room tryptic I did called “Vibrations” [which is 20 feet by 6 feet!]. When I meet people, this [having her art in a famous person’s house] is not the first thing I tell them.
You’ve continued to expand on your Warrior in a Gown theme.
Over the last decade, I have been creating pieces featuring these gowns with this theme that who we are as women is very layered, like a very thick woven piece of opulent fabric. Not everyone knows all our stories and what we have had to endure and what we are trained to go through, like walking through the fire with a smile on our face.
It goes back to micro and macro. The macro idea of a gown is this luxurious item that you save for special occasions, but the luxurious gown exists because of the labor it took to create the woven fabric, that took women toiling and thinning out the fibers and then weaving them and stitching them.
The gallery provided magnifying glasses to the art patrons at the opening. Have you seen people try to read every word on a piece? Do you want people to do that? Or do you want some of the words to be mysterious?
Yes and yes and yes [laughs]! I look at my art as an invitation to play or have an interaction. If you want to get in closer and have a more intimate moment with this piece, there’s something there for you to discover about yourself in that piece.
Some people try to read everything. Other people say, “No thanks, I don’t need a magnifying glass because I can feel the energy coming off of it.”
With Woven In, you had a theme and a vision. Did the words come to you as you were sketching out the piece, or did you have the words written out?
As I do the profile of a face, I’m very intentional about what I put there. It’s an area where everyone will read it. Most of the time they are positive affirmations or reminders.
When I work in the bodice of the piece and the lines to create the larger skirting of the gown, it’s about tapping into that stream of consciousness and getting the ego out and just being in that mindfulness space and letting it come through. It’s different if I’m doing a commission piece and a client has given me those words. In that scenario, I’m in a meditative state and it is those words that I incorporate into the imagery.
Tell me about your nonprofit organization Community Art Collaborative.
During the pandemic my friend Jennifer Edwards and I were talking about what we could do about this absence of a collective grieving process. I said, “Why don’t we do some art because that always helps me feel better?” We came up with the idea for a community public art project.
Jennifer spread the word throughout Plymouth [MA], saying, “Here is a honeycomb shape template [the honeycombs are on card stock templates and have been digitally archived]. Pour your heart out. Tell us how you survive this pandemic. What helps you get though the day?”
We received 1,400 honeycombs and made them into public art displays and sculptures. We collected art from kindergarteners, people who were 90 years old, adults in the recovery community, adults working in the abilities community, people in the Herring Pond Wampanoag tribe…It showed the incredible diversity in the town of Plymouth and how people can truly come together to get through difficult times.
Are the honeycombs still up today?
We have one piece that includes many honeycombs that’s permanently installed on Lincoln Street in Plymouth. It was 1,200 honeycombs of art. What we love about that piece is that it’s six panels and it’s like two triptychs. There is art on both sides of the panels and it’s on a walkway going into the teacher’s administration building. We really were changing the architectural footprint of that environment.
You described the honeycomb triptychs as a way of changing an architectural footprint. Are there other architectural projects you are thinking about or working on?
[Smiles]. I have several ideas germinating. For a couple years I’ve been working with a Marriott property in Tampa, the Renaissance Hotel, as a resident artist. I brought my large-scale art into the hotel and worked with the hotel and small local businesses to explore how to create community through hospitality around art.
Who are some of the creative people that inspire you?
Number one is Paul Goodnight, a Boston artist and the first artist I met who showed me that you could create a sustainable art career. His work is profound, his artistic skill level is out of this world, and if you ever get the privilege to meet him or sit in on one of his classes, it is powerful!
Number two, Faith Ringgold. She is a master storyteller when it comes to visual art. She knows how to be an artivist and work for social justice, and how to navigate waters that were not always easy to navigate in the fine art world.
Then there are poets who have influenced my poetry: Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez. I could go on. Then there’s the writing of black historians who talk about legacy building. There could be a much longer list.
Do you like to cook?
I like to assemble [laughs]. I love Mediterranean food. My go-to is a great board filled with hummus and olives and cucumbers and tomatoes and fresh basil, fruit, bread, and cheese.
What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received as an artist?
The best was from artist Cheryl R. Riley, who said, “Honey, don’t shrink your light. You keep doing it.”
Worst advice (and I don’t want to offend anyone). Someone told me to put my art on a mug. That works for some people! And maybe I will do that at some point, but not for now.
Lightning-round questions: People often bond over food and art, and here are quick questions about both.
Favorite breakfast. Does coffee count?
If tomorrow was your birthday, what kind of cake shall I bake for you? I love a dessert of fresh berries and homemade fresh cream. If there needs to be a cake component, I would want a fluffy angel food cake.
What’s the most memorable meal you’ve had? Grilled octopus at the Epicurean Hotel in Tampa.
You are hosting a dinner party and get to invite six people living or dead. Who are you inviting? Anthony Bourdain, Oprah, Carlos Santana, Kahlil Gibran, and my recent significant other because they are full of great stories, and my buddy Kamil Peters, a metal sculptor and incredible artist. That’s a lot of men! There are too many females to invite! If I could add more guests, I would invite America Ferrera and Kerry Washington.
What are you serving? We are starting with Cape Verdean pastel, which is like a fried empanada with local tuna. I would have an array of salads, a couscous salad, something with brussels sprouts, grilled fish, some mussels Mozambique style, simple root vegetables like yucca or cassava, and asparagus. I would have everyone bring a dessert.
What is the favorite piece of art you own? Sonya Clark and I were in an artist in residence program together at the James Weldon Johnson Foundation. She gifted me this little box of chalk. She hand-carved one letter on each piece of chalk, and it spelled “lift every voice.” [Meclina is beaming with joy as she says these words.].
Most captivating museum visit. The Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2019, I think. They had a prayer room installation with white-on-white cut-out silhouettes and illumination throughout the space. They set out small pencils with pieces of paper and you could write the name of someone who has passed on and leave it there.
Palate and Palette menu for Meclina
Here’s what I would cook if Meclina and her significant other came to dinner, which they are invited to do:
Alphabet soup (I can’t resist)
Zuni Café’s roasted chicken and bread salad
Roasted Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and parsnips with parsley-pistachio pesto
Fresh blueberries with homemade fresh cream (of course)
Where to find Meclina (and you should!)
Beacon Gallery 524 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
meclinaart.com
Community Art Collaborative
A very talented young artist! It will be interesting to watch what she does next.
Fabulous interview. I found it so engaging. Meclina is so innovative with her art and how she chooses to incorporate words. What a delight it must have been so pick her brain for a bit!