We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Megan Biddle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Megan , appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I am a third-generation artist and grew up in a house built by my grandfather. My parents and both paternal grandparents were artists and so the house was filled with generations of art and relics made by family members and other artists. So, I think it was the other way around- that I knew I didn’t want to pursue another way of life than the one that was already ingrained in me at a very young age.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am originally from NY state, currently living in Philadelphia PA. I am a former a co-director and member of the non-profit network of artists-run spaces, Tiger Strikes Asteroid. I am an educator in the glass program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and have taught workshops at craft schools including Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, and Oxbow School of Art. I also work as an arts administrator for a nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia. These areas of work balance the solitude I seek in my studio practice and at times provide the opportunity collaborate, share, and support other artists while creating space for personal and artistic growth. My work is primarily based in abstraction and encompasses sculpture, printmaking and drawing. I make experiment and process driven work with a focus on glass and other state changing materials. My varied but unified body of work reflects on measures of time, phenomena of the natural world and more recently cycles of life and death. Glass has unique physical characteristics that resonate with the human experience, such as its weight and gravity to the corporeal and its luminosity to the spirit. I like to focus on the seductive qualities of materials to create a point of connection for the viewer. This tactility feels vital when human connection and our relationship with nature is not always prioritized.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

So much of life has become experienced through a screen. This summer I went on a whale watch with my nephews and there was a little girl sitting on the floor glued to her ipad as whales enchantingly leapt out of the water all around the boat. Society can relearn how to have real experiences instead of gratification through someone else’s eyes. This relates to artists and creatives in that the process of creation can be glacially slow and much of what we do is unseen. In my studio practice, there is not always a determined outcome in the initial stages of a work so there is always a lot of process, tests and obstacles happening behind the scenes. This invisible labor needs to become part of the story of how an artwork unravels. I think if society can slow down and become less obsessed with the instant gratification that has traversed our feeds and lives, there can begin to be a deeper understanding and appreciation for all the parts that go into art making. It’s like growing food- the planting, watering, weeding, ripening, and harvesting are all part of the story for a beautiful summer tomato to find its way to your kitchen table.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In the Spring semester of 2020, I was teaching a glass casting class. In March, when all classes pivoted to online learning, I had to figure out how to teach this hands-on class, which relied on a furnace of glass that melts glass at 2100 F via zoom. Hot casting is a glass process that uses different types of molds to shape glass as it goes from a molten state to a solid one. In re-creating this class it was important to me to maintain the alchemy of a material going through a state change as that is the wonder of this specific glass process. I thought about the limited resources the students may have, especially as many of them suddenly found themselves living at home with their parents. I could safely assume they all had a kitchen and some basic staples in their pantry’s. As the semester progressed students used tinfoil, plastic product inserts, acrylic mouth guards for TMJ, and even oyster mushrooms as molds to cast materials such as a sugar and water, which have semitransparent qualities, similar to glass. While many were disappointed to not be working with the material in the studio, the ingenuity that surfaced surpassed my expectation and was like a light during a pretty dark time. That resourcefulness is one of the most valuable gifts that an art student can take away from their education experience, especially with a medium like glass that can be cost prohibitive and reliant on special equipment. It has trickled into and changed the course of my own art practice. I hope that my students held on to that wisdom.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meganbiddle.com
• Instagram: @megalicious77

Image Credits
Constance Mensh