Dean J. Meeker

Dean Jackson Meeker was born in Colorado on May 19, 1920. In 1939, Meeker studied painting and sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under Boris Anisfeld and Albin Polasek. His studies were interrupted by World War II, as he was drafted into the army in 1942, but he returned to school in 1944. Meeker also attended Northwestern University where he studied art history, philosophy, literature, and anthropology. He earned his BFA in painting in 1946 and his MFA in painting in 1947 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During his college years, Meeker worked for an advertising agency and a toy/novelty firm where he was exposed to the silkscreen process. The artist began teaching in 1946 as an instructor in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and was promoted to assistant professor in 1950. In 1949 he began teaching the silkscreen process and his experiments in silkscreen led to his use of a combination of polymer plate intaglios and screen printing. To achieve this he developed the "Meeker" press to print the high relief plates. His first successful serigraphy-polymer intaglio print was published in 1961. Meeker taught drawing, painting, and printmaking at Madison until 1992. In 1958, Meeker was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study printmaking in Europe. He worked at Hayter's printmaking workshop, Atelier 17, in Paris and with printmaker Kaiko Moti. He also studied prints in the museums of Spain and Italy. Meeker's work is represented in the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Milwaukee, Beloit College Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Denison University, Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, Library of Congress, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Meeker exhibited his prints internationally. Dean J. Meeker died in Madison, Wisconsin on October 4, 2002.