Merrilee Challiss (b 1971, Cleveland, Ohio) is a multi-media artist who currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama. Challiss holds a BA in Studio Arts (UAB 1994), an MFA Sculpture (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 2000), and a M Ed in Visual Arts (UAB 2022). Challiss was Co-owner of BottleTree Café, a music venue, café, bar in Birmingham, Alabama from 2006-2015 (www.bottletree.com). Challiss’ journey also includes working a stint as a window decorator in Berlin in 1992, working with a team to paint endangered species murals for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tennessee and Alabama, and teaching art (mostly drawing) to all age groups. Challiss received a “Window of Opportunity Award” from the Leeway Foundation in 2000, an Alabama State Council of the Arts grant in 2005, was included in the Juror’s Pick / New American Paintings, Southeast Edition 2015, and received a purchase award from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2025 for her hand-drawn animation Feral. Challiss has exhibited her work from Portland, Oregon to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Challiss collaborated with scientist, Dr Rick Strassman, to produce illustrations for his psychedelic memoir, released December 2024, Altered States: A Doctor’s Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth, published by Simon & Schuster. 

Working across multiple media, including drawings, paintings, sculpture, animation and installation, Challiss’ imagery traffics in the esoteric, the oracular, the revelatory and the liminal. Challiss’ output, largely channeled, asks the viewer  to sit in wonder or contemplation of the fact that, at the messy end of the Anthropocene and late stage-capitalism, everything going forward must either be an elegy for what we have lost or a celebration of what we have left, perhaps both. Challiss aims through her work to honor and elevate the divine feminine and the goddess principle which constellates throughout all creation. 

Call and Response: a traveling pop-up of mostly small works in gouache on paper, small ceramics and other odds and ends 

“Shouting into the void to see what comes forth as a response, is a metaphor for how the paintings come into being. Rarely do I plan a work of art ahead of time or know what is going to emerge when beginning a drawing or painting, but rather I prefer the images reveal themselves in layers - that way there is more a conversation with spirit rather than me imposing my will. 

Eyes of Protection, small ceramic objects, have been a part of my practice since 2012 and I have dutifully made a “batch” or two every year for 15 years. They are intended to be talismanic objects, into which you can encode your own intention of healing energy or protection spell and they each contain a shimmery inner eye / yoni surprise to honor the divine feminine.