Letters Project

Merrill Shatzman (left), Raquel Salvatella de Prada (center) and Deborah Pope (right) are faculty at Duke University.  Shatzman and Salvatella de Prada teach in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies and Pope in the Department of English.

Deborah Pope received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin.  She is the author of five books of literary criticism and poetry, and currently Professor of English at Duke University and Chair of the Creative Writing Committee.
Link to Duke University, Department of English website

The abundantly detailed prints of artist Merrill Shatzman question the “universal language” created by signs, writing systems, symbols and pre-imagined images (such as maps, charts, photographs, texts and written language).  Inspired by her obsession with written forms from multiple cultures including Middle Eastern, Far Eastern and Meso-American, Shatzman’s black and white woodcuts are rich with calligraphic marks, camouflage, patterning and symbols which allude to signs and letters, condensed and illegible.  Her symbolic interpretations of visual letterforms respond to the rich cultural history of the civilizations from which they are inspired, contemplating ideas of relics and interweaving the domains of philosophy, religion, mysticism, linguisitics and humanistic inquiry

Merrill Shatzman resides in Durham, North Carolina where she is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Visual Art at Duke University.  She received her B.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and M.A and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her work is widely exhibited in numerous solo, group and juried print exhibitions with most recent selected representation including: solo exhibitions at the Herbert Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (April 2009), Roanoke College (January 2008) and invitational exhibitions including the upcoming Syntax at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University (March 2010), Whither Geometry, Radford University Museum of Art (2008) and Printed: Contemporary Prints and Books by North Carolina Artists, Greenhill Center for North Carolina Art, Greensboro, NC (2008).  Shatzman’s award winning prints are in collections throughout the US including: the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Boston Public Library, The Fogg Museum, UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Art, California State University Long Beach, Museum of Art, Texas Tech University, National Museum of American Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.
Link to Duke Universiry, Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies website

Raquel Salvatella de Prada is a computer artist and Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University.  She focuses on Motion Graphics, 3D Modeling and Animation and Digital Design.  Prior to joining the Duke faculty in 2008, she was Creative Director at HG Media, a multimedia design company in Princeton, NJ.  She also worked in Madrid and in London.  She studied Music Education at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and Computer Arts at the Instituto Euorpeo di Design, Madrid.  She received a fellowship to study for a semester at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Link to Duke Universiry, Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies website