L'Merchie Frazier
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L'Merchie Frazier is a visual and performance artist /educator /consultant and is a native of Jacksonville, Florida now based in Boston. A mother of two sons and one daughter, L'Merchie has been active in the New England community for over twenty years. As a visual artist she is best known for her highly skilled hand crafted beaded jewelry, fiber and metal sculptures, and mixed media installations.
L'Merchie attended the City College of New York, the University of Hartford, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Currently she is Director of Education at the Museum of Afro-American History, Boston. She was formerly Education Director of Arts Are Academic serving several Boston cultural institutions, inclusive of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Huntington Theater and the Boston Public Schools promoting art literacy for students and teachers across disciplines. She has taught African American Art and Culture at the Boston Community Academy for at-risk students. She teaches courses in cultural diversity; principal teacher of visual and performance art for the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and workshop instructor for the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, MA. Certified as an artist educator by the Kennedy Center Artists as Educators program, she is on the roster of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Directory for Events and Residences; served on the MCC Folk Arts Review Panel and the First Night 2001 Review Panel. She has served as director of urban art camps in Greater Boston. She was commissioned by Legacy Productions for PBS as Art Curator for Black America Facing the Millennium. She was honored as a teacher for TPS Adult Literacy in Hartford, CT.
L'Merchie was awarded the Francis X. Merritt/Mary B. Bishop Grant and is a recipient of the Lila Wallace, Reader's Digest, Arts International artist-in-residence fellowship in Brazil; "Best of Boston" poetry award 1999. She is a recipient of an artist residency in Tainan, Tqiwan; commissioned muralist for the New England Aquarium; commissioned kinetic sculptor for Boston ParkArts 2000-2002; City of Boston Public Art Award; and the New England Foundation for the Arts, Visible Republic Public Art commission in holography.
L'Merchie's work has appeared in several publications, including Spirits of the Cloth, by Carolyn Mazloomi; A History of Art in Africa, by Monica Visona; In the Spirit of Martin, Sorin and Shannon; Threads of Faith, Mazloomi and Pongracz; Fiberarts magazine, the International Review of African American Art, Art New England, and the Encyclopedia of Black American Artists. She was featured artist in a three-part cable television series, About the Arts, and has appeared on City Line,PBS, other media programs and featured in the Museum of Fine Arts:Devens Lecture: series by Edmund Barry Gaither. She is represented in numerous private collections and the permanent collection of the University of Vermont, the American Craft Museum, New York, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC. Exhibition sites, internationally and nationally include the Museum of Afro-American History Boston; Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston; New England Quilt Museum; Museu Lasar Segall, Brazil; Ain Ping Harbor, Tainan, Taiwan; the American Craft Museum, New York; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.
L'Merchie writes of her work: "My life work is one work. The images in the medium of fiber, beads, metals, poetry or performance are threads of memory, reclaimed from the icons that trigger recognition, salvation, redemption. This journey is 'Save me from my amnesia."
Selection of poems coming soon
