Meg Cranston
Meg Cranston (b. 1960) is an American conceptual artist whose wide-ranging practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video, and writing. Known for an incisive sense of humor and an expansive approach to image-making, Cranston explores the relationship between individual experience and collective culture, examining how objects, images, language, and ideas acquire meaning. Her work draws freely from art history, color theory, fashion, design, advertising, popular culture, and autobiography, often pairing seemingly playful or absurd gestures with more complex questions of identity, value, representation, and perception.
Born in Baldwin, New York, Cranston received her BA from Kenyon College and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She emerged as an important figure within the Los Angeles art community and gained wider recognition through influential exhibitions including Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the 1993 Venice Biennale. Her work was also featured in the inaugural Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum in 2012.
Cranston has exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand. She has received numerous honors, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a J. Paul Getty Community Foundation Artist Grant, an Artadia Award, and a COLA Individual Artist Fellowship.
Cranston lives and works in Los Angeles, where she serves as Chair of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design.
