Artist Statement
My perspective for a long time has been that what is important, what is powerful is often not what appears to be so at first. My understanding of this grows out of my experience, the stories I hear, and the stories I tell. Art provides a way to explore those stories, what is meaningful, and what is true. That intuitive thinking does not replace verbal reasoning, but it is an important piece of a fuller perception. Work in the studio comes from that intuitive thinking. It is a different world than that surrounding writing, so, in ways it doesn’t make sense to write about art. Still, I do believe there are ways to describe connections between verbal and visual that can be useful for a viewer. So I write, with a full awareness that the experience of viewing is fundamentally different than the experience of reading.
The thought that seems most alive in my thinking now is the transitions in life. Moving through loss and grief, into instability and disorientation, and on into something new. The ultimate transition is from life into death, but there are many, many others. Many pieces have had some kind of passageway in them. For a long time now too, birds have been a way of showing both mortality and a sense of vibrant life. Something more solid and something more ephemeral. Something three dimensional and clear and something more ambiguous. My sense is that there is real beauty in both parts of these compositions and they are more interwoven with each other than we imagine.
Our whole experience of life is filled with losses, the in-between spaces, and beginnings. For me, a beauty that is unblemished doesn’t have much depth; being broken and healed and carrying the marks of both is what calls to me.
Artist Bio
Merrill Krabill was on the faculty at Goshen College in Indiana from 2001-2024. Before that he taught at Bethel College in Kansas for 12 years.
An important aesthetic influence has been Paul Soldner, who Krabill studied under in graduate school (Claremont Graduate University). Soldner's approach, pace, and general philosophy about art were formative. The impact Japan's aesthetic had on Soldner was also passed on.
In the summer of 2005 Krabill was an Artist-in-Residence at Togei no mori (Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park). The opportunity to work, travel, and visit with artists in Japan has had a lasting impact on his work. The culture is very different from his, but, in spite of that, many ideas resonate deeply.
Another important more recent cultural influence has been ideas associated with rasquachismo from the writing of scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto. These perspectives from a Latine culture feel both unfamiliar and quite familiar at the same time.
Krabill is married to Clare Krabill and they have six adult children.