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About Perry Meigs

My work begins on foot. Walking is both research and a way of knowing environments — a practice through which place becomes inseparable from feeling. As I trace routes through landscapes, the land absorbs the emotional life I bring to it: a difficult conversation, a moment of awe, a quiet grief, a sudden joy. These experiences do not simply happen in a place; they become of it, embedded in the terrain until the landscape itself holds an emotional charge. To return is to remember.

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The paths I walk become structural frameworks for organizing memory, observation, and what the eye holds. Through painting, drawing, collage, stitched thread, and video, I transform lived experience — including its emotional textures and personal journeys — into layered abstractions built from maps, photographs, GPS-tracked movement, collected materials, and color memory. I often describe my practice as “creating maps to find belonging,” but these are not maps of geography alone. They are maps of feeling made physical: where sorrow bent a trail, where wonder opened a vista.

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Over the past several years, my work has focused on public landscapes and systems of access, preservation, and movement. Since moving to the Bay Area, I have mapped movements through Palo Alto, Baylands Nature Preserve, and Yosemite National Park. In my Yosemite series, repeated family walks coalesced into layered paintings weaving together stitched routes, collaged park materials, and traced pathways. Each work is a record of both physical terrain and emotional experience — an intense argument with my teenage daughter becomes a particular bend in the trail; a mountain hike where my son and I spotted a black bear becomes a color, a texture, a held breath pressed into paint. The landscape does not merely witness these moments; it becomes their keeper.

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Earlier works trace my lifelong relationship with Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley, mapping running routes onto raw linen alongside public transit lines. These are emotional landscapes as much as geographic ones — the accumulation of years of solitary movement through a place that shaped who I became. Together, these works ask what it means to truly belong to a place, how a landscape enters the self and becomes part of a personal story, and what a place carries of us in return — long after we have walked away.

Bio:

Perry Meigs is a painter and interdisciplinary artist whose work begins on foot. Walking is both research and a way of knowing — tracing routes through landscapes that become structural frameworks for mapping movement, memory, and belonging. Her practice spans painting, drawing, collage, digital imagery, stitched thread on raw linen and canvas, and video.

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Meigs received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and in the International Experimental Video Festival (Arnhem). She has been an artist in residence at Skowhegan, the Cubberley Artist Studio Program, and Kala Art Institute, and is a recipient of an ArtLift Micro-Grant from the City of Palo Alto. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and the L.A. Times.

Exhibitions​​​​

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2026

  • Charting Presence, Wissahickon Valley, Laete Gallery, Philadelphia, PA SOLO

  • Mapping From the Ground: Yosemite National Park, Rinconda Gallery, Palo Alto, CA SOLO

  • FEM-minis, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA

  • Mapping Time, Mercury 20, Oakland, CA 

  • Super Hunger Anti-Valentine Bowl Games Part LX, Works, San Jose, CA

  • "Shadows of Winter Light", Silicon Valley Visual Arts Exhibit, Burlingame, CA

 

2025

  • 7th Annual Sanchez Art Center 50|50 Show 50/50, Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA

  • Mending and Marvels, Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA

  • Works/San José’s 2025 Community Art Auction, San José, CA

  • 103rd Anniversary Exhibit, Pacific Arts League, Palo Alto, CA
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2024

  • Boundaries, New Museum Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA

  • Lands and Symbiotic Futures, Women Eco Artist Dialog, Kunstmatrix

  • Tierra y Raíces/Earth and Roots, Mexican Heritage Plaza, San Jose, CA

  • The Anti Valentine's Show, Works San José, San José, CA
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2023

  • Mapping Palo Alto, Rinconada Library Display Space, Palo Alto, CA SOLO

  • Art in the Garden, Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden, Palo Alto, CA

  • Pets and Animals, Pacific Arts League, Palo Alto, CA

  • P.A.L. Members Curated Exhibit, Palo Alto, CA
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2022

  • Mapping Palo Alto Together, Rinconada, Mitchell Park, Downtown Library, Palo Alto, CA  SOLO​
     

2018-2021

  • Flags, Skowhegan Block Party, New York, NY

  • Like Birds of a Feather, Town and Country Village, Palo Alto, CA

  • Insights from my Garden, Claremont Art Studios, San Mateo, CA

  • Silicon Valley Group, Claremont Art Studios, San Mateo, CA

  • Gallery Group, The Rye Art Center, Rye, NY

  • Painters on Location, The Rye Art Center, Rye, NY

  • The Valentine Show, Kenise Barnes Gallery, Larchmont, NY
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2013 & Earlier (Selected)

  • Hudson Valley Artists, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY

  • RISD Biennial, Claire Olivia Fine Art, New York, NY

  • To Be Continued…, Art in General, New York, NY

  • To Be Continued…, Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

  • Identity and the Home, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

  • Whose Body is it? Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA

  • Special Feature U.S.A., The International Experimental Video Festival, Arnhem, The Netherlands

 

 

RESIDENCIES

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  • Idaho BaseCamp Artist Residency,  Ketchum, ID

  • Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, NY

  • Cubberley Artist Studio Program Residency, Palo Alto, CA

  • The Experimental Television Center, Oswego, NY

 

 

CURATORIAL & PUBLIC ART PROJECTS

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  • "Art in the Garden" Program – Organized a community art event at Elizabeth Gamble Garden, Palo Alto, CA (2004), showcasing contemporary Silicon Valley artists in an interactive outdoor exhibition.

  • "Mapping Palo Alto Together" – Led a public engagement art project funded by the ArtLift Microgrant from the City of Palo Alto (2022-2023), exploring community identity through collaborative art-making.

 

 

TEACHING & WORKSHOPS (Selected)
 

San Francisco Art Fair, San Francisco, CA 2026

  • Designed and taught curriculum for artist Jeremy Deller, “Life drawing of a Caregiver.”

Crystal Springs Uplands School, Belmont, CA (2019–2026)
Middle School Visual Arts Teacher

Designed and taught curriculum across drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics

  • Led 2D and 3D foundations courses for grades 6–8
    Managed the art studio, including ordering materials, organizing supplies, and overseeing the departmental budget
    Coordinated student exhibitions and facilitated classroom critiques
     

St. Bernard’s School, New York, NY (2014–2019)
Visual Arts Teacher, Grades 6–9

  • Taught a comprehensive visual arts curriculum to middle school and 9th-grade boys

  • Developed lessons in drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed media

  • Managed the art room and oversaw materials and budget

  • Curated the annual all-school student art exhibition
     

Visiting Artist & Professor, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI (2009–2010)

  • Led senior seminars in video art and editing

  • Presented professional work and mentored students on thesis projects

Professor, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI (2003-2004)

  • Taught production studio classes for junior-year film/video majors.

Instructor, Parsons School of Design (SOPIS Program), New York, NY (2002-2003)

  • Taught figure drawing and perspective to international college students.

Instructor, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY (2000-2001)

Taught painting to museum students.

 

 

PUBLICATIONS (Selected)

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  • "Palo Alto Funds Art to Unify Community," Olivia Atkinson, The Campanile, October 24, 2022

  • "Palo Alto Public Art Tells Stories Both Collective and Personal," Anne Li, Stanford University Online, November 2022

  • "Pandemic Solutions," JD Beltran, Vas Newsletter, February 27, 2021

  • "For Hikers Seeking Art," Brooklyn is a Left Bank, The New York Times, December 15, 2000

  • "Color Me Mine," New Art Examiner, 1998

  • "Color Me Mine at LACE," L.A. Weekly, April 3-9, 1998

  • "Taking Chances with Forms and Ideas," Nomad, Number 6, Spring 1994

 

 

PROFESSIONAL ART & MEDIA EXPERIENCE

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  • NBC Universal Studios, Video Editor, Dateline & The Today Show, New York, NY (2001-2013)

  • NBC Universal Studios, Media Manager, (2001-2008)

  • WNET, Assistant Editor, Bill Moyers Now, New York, NY (1999-2003)

  • Marc Foxx Gallery, Assistant, Los Angeles, CA 1998

  • Manny Silverman Gallery, Assistant, Los Angeles, CA 1998

  • Allan Stone Gallery, Assistant, New York, NY

  • Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Video Art Curator, Providence, RI (1993-1994)

 

 

EDUCATION

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  • M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA

  • B.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

 

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS

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  • Video & Digital Media: Final Cut Pro, Avid, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop

  • Public Art & Exhibition Design: Site-Specific Installation Planning, Video Projection Mapping

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