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Erin McCluskey Wheeler
Erin McCluskey Wheeler is a painter, collagist, writer, curator, and teacher based in Richmond, CA. Erin works in many series at once and across disciplines in painting, collage, works on paper, prints, essays, and poetry. There is always a careful attention to placement, selection, and adjacency in both her writing and her visual art. Each medium with its different qualities, allows Erin to explore ideas about memory, language, color, and place, while retaining a unified voice that reflects on the power of color and connection.
Erin has a BA in studio art and art history from Beloit College, and an MFA from California College of the Arts in writing. Erin is a faculty member of the 92NY School of the Arts in New York City. With other nonprofits and art centers, Erin teaches collage and mixed media classes and workshops throughout the Bay Area.
Erin’s collage based artwork is licensed and sold through West Elm, Minted, Target, and Samsung. She has won multiple awards for her visual art and poetry including the top prize for poetry from Northwind Arts and in 2022 was the featured cover and poster artist for Kolaj Magazine’s World Collage Day. In 2024, she published a book of her writing and photography, Dandelions, with National Monument Press. Erin has been an Artist in Residence with the City of El Cerrito, the City of Walnut Creek, and was awarded a Gallery-as-Studio Residency and solo exhibition at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She was part of the inaugural g ... view more »
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Artist Statement
Please provide a brief description of your creative process, motivations, and inspirations:
Erin’s work is an ongoing investigation into material reuse and restoration. Erin works with paper and found materials – cutting up, grouping, reconnecting, and rearranging in a process of transformation – an intentional act of reusing what has been discarded, breaking things apart and putting them back together again. Her process – no matter the material – starts with color and is additive and iterative – letting the pieces themselves determine the construction methods that she will use. Walking and collecting materials is an important part of Erin’s process. Erin is also involved in outreach and connection through the sourcing of papers from other artists and by using their failures, experiments, or studio scraps, she is bringing these artists into long distance collaboration. Erin approaches her work almost as an art restorer – completing shapes that have been cut, finding the forms under the layers, and matching the colors with paint mixed directly on the surface. This way of working grew in parallel to Erin’s experience as a caretaker for both her parents with early onset dementia. As her parents’ sense of self and connection to the world got smaller and more fragmented, Erin found beauty in reconstruction and in the careful placement of small things.
