Meredith Connelly

Meredith Connelly is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, best known for her grand-scale installations that emphasize the interplay of light, science, and technology. Connelly’s illuminated, site-specific displays, complete with interactive elements, connect and submerge viewers into glowing, otherworldly environments. Developed from and influenced by the organic qualities of nature, Connelly’s structures are formed using manufactured materials that are able to accurately capture the elaborate detail of the natural world, while also supporting environmental sustainability. Having worked with lighting and technology as a material for over a decade, Connelly has built a practice that has not only captured national attention but has engaged hundreds of thousands of participants in the evocative and inclusive power of public art.

Connelly's largest public project to date, titled LIGHTS, commissioned by the U.S. National Whitewater Center in 2019, welcomed over 200,000 visitors to the immersive attraction during its inaugural run. LIGHTS was a temporary and site-based illuminated walking trail that led viewers through a series of immersive, nature-inspired light installations, which were integrated into the forest. Focused on the concept of growth over time, Connelly produced her second temporary iteration of LIGHTS in November of 2020, which offered a range of approachable, multisensory, site-specific displays that housed more than 400 individual installation components. Connelly shares, “All-encompassing, warm, and curious, this series of work tapped into the innate connection human beings have with light and nature, bringing my work beyond the confines of manmade structures, and home to the spaces that inspired them."

Most recently, Connelly debuted Rail Trail Lights: Golden Threads in South End, Charlotte, a large-scale illuminated series of nature-inspired sculptures that celebrate the area’s transformation from industrial roots into a center for art, design, and innovation. The works draw from natural forms like honeycombs, stacked stones, and weavings, while also honoring local history, Indigenous land, and the power of collective creativity.

Also inspired by nature are Connelly’s complex hand-cut works on paper, reflective of the microscopic world, which she presses against transparent materials to resemble microscope slides. Connelly’s two-dimensional works have been exhibited in various galleries and group exhibitions, offering viewers a different, more collectible approach to her pivotal artistic practice. Connelly is committed to expanding community and culture through the arts, is an advocate for equality and women in the arts, and places great emphasis on supporting emerging and underrepresented femme, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ artists in all stages of their careers. More recently, Connelly has also been honing her curatorial prowess, developing and executing art exhibitions attached to causes she is passionate about.