Artist's Statement

The artist
Fiber sculptor and designer Susan Barrett Merrill was born in New London, Connecticut, USA, in 1946. She graduated from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, with a BA in Art and Education. She also attedned New Experimental College in Jutland, Denmark; The Aegean School of Fine Arts, Paros, Greece, and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds a teaching certificate in Maine.

Susan has been spinning and weaving for over 25 years. She has studied advanced weaving techniques at Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina and in New Mexico with Cordelia Coronado. Her work has been exhibited in professional craft shows and galleries on both coasts. She has taught weaving and spinning at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Waldorf schools, summer camps, and in studios in California, New Hampshire and Maine.

Zati Masks
Zati is an Urdu word meaning "intrinsic, from an inner place". Fiber artist Susan Barrett Merrill has been creating these masks for many years. The faces are woven flat with hand-spun wool. Facial features are created in the weave, using weft-wedging and other techniques, and sculpted into three-dimensional masks. The faces are then felted onto headdresses using soft Merino wool. Each mask is unique.

Of all the techniques used to create masks throughout history – carving, clay, basketry, leather, metalwork – not one is even similar to Merrill's method of using warp-and-weft weaving to create three-dimensional faces. This makes the entire Zati mask process unique in world mask culture.