Megan Walker attended Mount Holyoke College for her undergraduate studies where she graduated with a Bachelor of Art in 2020 with a focus in Mathematics and Studio Art. While she developed her artist practice during this time, she turned to the world of education afterwards and, in the intervening time, she worked as a paraeducator, student teacher, substitute teacher, and tutor. In the Fall 2022, she will return to Mount Holyoke College in the Professional and Graduate Programs in pursuit of a Master’s in Education. She is working towards a career as a high school mathematics, and she plans to continue as an artist on the side.
For her, art is a method to convey ideas about philosophy, explore identity, and evoke emotions and stories. Her early artwork examined questions and prompted the viewer to think deeper on such subjects as perspective, balance, and identity. What is perspective and how does it impact our lives? What is balance and how do we embody (or not) its concept? How do we portray our identity? It did so through a variety of materials and techniques. Now she has turned to using book art through which to convey ideas.
In these recent works, she has begun to explore the relationship between language, books, and paper. She investigates how the quality of paper supports the book structure and the written word, how the book structure reinforces the written word, and how the written word builds the content which is reflected back in the choices of paper and book structures. The artwork also pushes against the boundaries of book forms by challenging the traditional structure of a bound book and the historical distinction between the craft world, with papermaking and book binding, and the fine arts. It considers the impact that language can have, both to heal and to harm, and how such meanings change when recontextualized. In examining these themes within book art the works reinforce the significance of the relationship between language, books, and paper.
Within all her work, she strives to apply layers of meaning, allowing for a deeper conversation into these themes and into the underlying questions that govern our lives, whether philosophical, logical, or emotional in nature.