My writing spans art criticism, exhibition statements, research, and more.
Andréa Keys Connell: Mom at Artspace, Raleigh
To Take Shape and Meaning: Exceptional, Perspective-Shifting Indigenous Art at the NCMA
In the Studio with Kelsey Merreck Wagner
Maud Gatewood Retrospective at BRAHM: A Delicate and Bold Success
Environmental Duality in Turbulence: Birds/Beauty/
Language/Loss at the Block Gallery
Lorraine O'Grady: Both/And – Nationally Important Art and Deep Thinking at the Weatherspoon Art Museum
Stephen Towns' Mesmerizing Visual Stories of Shadowed History at Reynolda House Museum of American Art
Arts Access' Movement Exhibition Promotes NC Artists with Disabilities at the Sertoma Arts Center
The Ella West Gallery Opens with Powerful Exhibit, Return to Parrish Street: A Dream Realized
Abstracto/Latino Exhibition Highlights Local Latinx Artists at the Block Gallery
An Intimate, Symbolic Exhibition of Ida Kohlmeyer’s Artwork at the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum
Artists Alley Exhibition at the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum Asks, "What Makes a Community?"
"Sharing the Creative Aging Impact Story: Navigating Barriers, Pursuing Sustainability, and Dreaming"
Published May 2024
As the U.S. population ages and ageism fuels isolation and diminished well-being, this research explores how creative aging programs—despite barriers like funding and visibility—can transform negative aging narratives through arts-based engagement, policy support, and visionary growth.
"Architectural Site and Imagined Landscape: The Foundation Lore and Perpetuated Mythology of the Round City of Baghdad"
Aisthesis: The Interdisciplinary Honors Journal
Published May 2023
This research argues that the Round City of Baghdad, though short-lived in physical form, became a lasting architectural and imagined landscape, whose foundation legends and enduring mythology must be studied together to fully understand its significance across history, literature, and art.
At a relentless pace 5 trillion plastic bags per year—1 million every hour—these whisper-thin conveniences accumulate into an unbearable burden. Seemingly weightless in our hands, these plastic bags amass an estimated 27.5 million metric tons of waste annually—a crushing force and a mere statistic in the ever-growing impact of consumerism on our environment.
Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s trash weavings transform this staggering weight into something tangible, something undeniable. The discarded plastics are not just refuse but artifacts of our collective impact. Each warp and weft is a memory we can not discard, intertwining individual moments of consumption into artworks that are both physically heavy and emotionally inescapable—beautiful and repulsive in equal measure.
But the weight of these weaving—and the weight of plastic pollution—is more than a statistic. Weight is a reckoning. It is the mental toll of witnessing environmental degradation, the anxiety of knowing our convenience gambles against our future. Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s work invites us to feel this weight, to carry it, and perhaps, to rethink the burdens we leave behind.