My art expresses the particular experience of being a child, conveying what it feels like to move through a world where scale is unstable, where everything is first far too big and then shrinks disconcertingly as one’s body grows. Children must exist in a state of extreme attention in order to navigate a world where nothing fits them, and my work examines the imperfect details that a bored and attentive child notices: a crack running down the plaster of an old building, a loose ceiling tile, the speckled patterns of black mold. By layering fragile scraps of paper and fabric, I show the decay and disintegration of the Pennsylvania rustbelt region I saw crumbling around me as a child.

My work draws on the close connection between children’s perception of their world as fragmented and unstable and the way they recreate that world by breaking apart and reassembling materials. I make my work using the same kinds of paper, cardboard, and fabric scraps I used as a child, aligning my practice with the purposeful tedium of childhood art-making by ripping bits of paper and fabric, gluing the pieces down, then layering thickly over the fragments with ink and watercolor to create vibrant, intense “memory pictures.”

Bio

Meghan Rosing is a visual artist, mother, and early childhood educator. Her art-making is deeply influenced by the way her students and two young children create spontaneously from whatever scraps they can find. Before teaching young children, she earned a PhD in Victorian children’s literature and taught writing and literature to adults. The narrative emphasis and moral earnestness of Victorian visual culture continues to make its way into her work. As a community-taught artist, she is also inspired by the freedom and fertility of “outsider” artists and makes many pilgrimages to the wonderful outsider artist environments of Wisconsin.

Upcoming Exhibitions

• Oregon Public Library, July 21-September 12, 2026

• Ballweg Gallery, November 2026