About Megan
Megan Shope (b. 1979, West Virginia) is a public health professional turned mixed media artist living with her husband and three children in Pittsburgh, PA. Shope has a Bachelor’s of Arts in psychology and a Master’s in Public Health from West Virginia University. In 2018, following her mother’s brain injury, she turned to art as a medium for processing grief, change, and loss. She creates collage, soft sculpture, and paintings examining the intersection of identity, motherhood, caregiving, and the revealing of core truths deep within. Her process includes examining, uncovering, and visually remaking the layers of our lives- weaving together the good and the hard. She has exhibited work at Duquesne University’s Les Idees Gallery, The Most Possible Kind; Ketchup City Creative’s Holding Space; Powerful Little Things, virtual exhibition with Roaring Artist Gallery; Painting at Night, with Artlink Fort Wayne, IN; The Anthropology of Motherhood at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, PA and the Sleeth Gallery, Buckhannon, WV; Maternochronics, Maternal Exhaustion in the Time of Pandemic, virtual exhibition, and HyperLocal, Assemble Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA.
She remembers this far-off dream called sleep and laments that she is a living cliche, running on reheated coffee as she parents two teens, a curious toddler, and herself in this very full life. Her work can be found on instagram at meganshope_designs.
Artist Statement
My art practice began five years ago following my mother’s debilitating brain injury. I was not an artist- I was a public health professional working in nonprofit birth work, advocating for women and families. Yet, the space where I could breathe was at my dining room table creating small, simple paintings that I had no intention for the world to see. I found this work of taking the terrible and the hard, in all aspects of my life, and transforming it into something new, something unexpected, something real to be a transformation of my own self. As my new found breath continued, so did my ideas of how to explore the complex layers of our lives through visual art.
I love piecing unexpected materials together and witnessing their story unfold before me. My work speaks to how the intricacies of layers, pattern, and texture come together to form something new and transformative- with found objects and paper often bearing no resemblance to their former shapes/ forms. I use collage, painting, ink, hand sewing, and sculpture in my work to pair shapes, my own marks, and patterns spontaneously with texture and color. I keep coming back to these themes of restoration, transformation, examining the real and hard, and trusting my instincts as an emerging artist.
My materials are sourced from family life- my work includes clothes my children have outgrown, art from their school projects, plastic from discarded sippee cups, rocks found on walks, produce netting, fabric from my neighborhood Buy Nothing group, and parking stubs from the orthodontist. My process reframes the somewhat mundane, somewhat poignant detritus of life with new purpose and narrative, as I ask deeper questions without the need to force resolution.
I create value in the restoration of the unremarkable pieces of everyday life while celebrating how we are continually transformed in the act of accepting ‘what is’ while creating a meaningful life. The curiosity and unfolding that occurs in my art practice reminds me that we as humans, whether caregivers or not, are meant to grow and evolve- revealing and releasing more of our true selves in the process. My work asks me to show up, be present, and let go of the outcome- resulting in moments of unexpected beauty and grace. In all of it, these things remain true- life is complex, intricate, beautiful and terrible, sometimes in the same moment. Expressing the good/hard, both/and in a compelling visual manner is breath and space for me, and each new piece remains right where I need to be.