2024 Merit Scholarship Recipient: Stella Coyle Healey

Describe the work you submitted for merits.

My work focuses on time and relationship built within objects. Whether through visual or academic research or repetitive processes like collage, wood working and sewing, physical and theoretical layers are formed and stripped away. These processes are acts of care and love- always referential and always contextual. I utilize this way of making to explore topics like gender performance, mental illness, desirability, the home and how I relate to them.

Why did you decide to come to MCAD?

My brother is an alum (class of '21), so I was already acquainted with the campus fairly well. I've always made things and I've always researched things. It was a big dilemma for me for choosing a college whether I would go into the arts or academics. Eventually I realized that if given the choice the result of my research was almost always a piece of art, whether a book or sculpture or piece of music, that's the way I can express ideas the best.

What are your plans for your senior year? And beyond?

After Graduation I plan to stay in the Twin Cities and continue making art.

What inspires you?

I get a lot of inspiration from vintage magazines and printed ephemera. I have an ever expanding collection which I draw from for collage supplies and inspiration. Theres something about Print that is such a window into so many aspects of the past. You see what was being sold and how it was being sold, what was chosen to be reported on and sometimes if you're lucky you get annotations or cut outs from previous owners- then it becomes like a puzzle.