Meghan Boody facts for kids

Meghan Boody (born 1964) is an American artist. She creates art using digital photos and sometimes sculptures. Her art is often surreal, which means it's dreamlike and strange, like a puzzle. It tells stories, often about finding out who you are. She often shows a young girl, dressed up, in a very unusual place. In the 1990s, she started using Adobe Photoshop to mix different pictures together. She was one of the first artists to use this digital trick really well.

About Meghan Boody's Life

Meghan Boody, whose birth name was Margaret Liscomb Boody, was born in New York City in 1964. She was the only child adopted by her older parents. She grew up in a part of New York called the Upper East Side. Her father worked at Columbia University. Her mother worked testing things for a school records group.

Meghan spent a lot of time by herself because both her parents worked. She made up her own worlds using her toys, her dog, and her pet mice. Her family also spent time in Long Island during the summer and on weekends. She said that there she "felt free and less alone." She liked "roaming the fields barefoot" and building forts with other kids.

Meghan Boody's Education

Meghan Boody went to Georgetown University. There, she earned degrees in philosophy and French. During her third year, she traveled to Paris to study with famous thinkers like Jacques Derrida.

In 1986, she moved to Paris again. This time, she studied fashion design at Parsons. She decided to try an introductory photography class and loved it right away. After studying in Paris, she came back to New York. She spent three years learning from Hans Namuth, a photographer. While working with him, she started to add interactive sculptures to her photography.

How Meghan Boody Creates Her Art

Meghan Boody's art takes a lot of steps to make. She first photographs her models, who are often wearing special costumes, in her studio. Then, she uses a computer to add them into different landscapes or backgrounds she has found. She spends many hours putting all the layers of images together. Each artwork can take months to finish.

Her art looks very theatrical and made-up. This style is inspired by photographers like Henry Peach Robinson. Meghan Boody says that all her studies in philosophy helped her figure out how to tell stories with her photos. She is also influenced by American, British, and French books. She is interested in how people heal and understand their minds. She wants her art to connect with deep, old stories that are part of everyone's mind.

Famous Art Series by Meghan Boody

Meghan Boody has created several interesting series of artworks.

Psyche and Smut

Psyche and Smut is a series of prints made in 2000. The story is about two twin sisters. Psyche is a polite and good girl. Smut is her wild, maybe even bad, twin. The sisters show the two sides of being a girl. The story follows them on a big journey from being separated to becoming friends again.

Psyche travels from New York to an underworld where her sister lives, after a fight with her mother. The twins go through changes and challenges on their journey. Psyche struggles to accept her sister. But in the end, they are pulled together by a strong force. They become one new whole person called Psyche Supernova.

The Lighthouse and How She Got There

Boody started her series The Lighthouse and how she got there in 2006. This series uses digitally combined photos. It shows a young girl growing up. She is stuck in what looks like a strict boarding school or workhouse. The story follows her adventures after the building she lives in burns down.

The story is set in Great Britain in the 1800s. The titles of each artwork come from the first lines of old Victorian novels about orphans. This series has three different endings. In one ending, a lighthouse keeper takes her in. In another, she ends up in a field surrounded by swamps. In the last ending, she goes back to the institution. She then escapes with a group of other girls. The main character was photographed over five years, from when she was 12 to 16 years old.

Where to See Her Art

Meghan Boody's art can be found in important art collections. These include:

• The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
• The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
• The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania.