Michael Mercil lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University. He was born in 1954 in Crookston, Minnesota. In 1978, Mercil received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and completed his MFA at the University of Chicago in 1988.
Mercil explores the “the near, the low, the common” through his diverse practices in drawing, sculpture, painting, needlepoint (recently), landscape architecture, filmmaking, performance, farming, and teaching His art has been included in solo and group shows at museums and art centers throughout the United States.
In 2023, Mercil’s 100-foot-long mural, “ART IS GOOD FOR YOU,” instantly became a landmark in downtown La Jolla, California. His 2022 exhibition, Some thing(s), at the Columbus College of Art and Design included a “free classroom” gallery for community poetry readings, dance and music performances, film screenings, and art school class events. During his tenure at The Ohio State University, Mercil inaugurated The Living Culture Initiative as an experimental field office where he hoed beans (Beanfield, 2006-2008), wrangled sheep (The Virtual Pasture, 2008–2011), broadcast the news (Reading the Daily News, 2008-ongoing), and planted a pollinator sanctuary (Site set-aside, 2017-ongoing). Mercil’s documentary, Covenant: a film about farm animals (and us), premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2013, and later screened at festivals across the United States and abroad.
His awards and recognitions include a Battelle Engineering, Technology and Human Affairs Endowment Award (2016, 2009); Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Artist Residency (2011—12); Harpo Foundation Visual Artist Award (2010); Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (2009, 2005); ASLA Design Honor Award (2009, 2003); Environmental Design Research Association Place Design Award (2002); Progressive Architecture Citation Award (1997); McKnight Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship (1990); National Endowment for the Arts Artist Design Fellowship (1989); and a Jerome Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship (1986).
Mercil’s writings have appeared in Anthropocene Magazine, Edible Columbus, PLACES magazine, Post Road, Public Art Review, and TriQuarterly. An interview/essay, co-authored with Amanda Gluibizzi, on Lucy Lippard’s “Dematerialization of the Art Object …” is included as a chapter in The Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature published in 2016.