Question 1

Who is the artist Meka Tome?

Accepted Answer

Meka Tome is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Providence, RI and Los Angeles, CA. She is a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Glass MFA candidate (2025–2027) and holds a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. She is distinct from open-source machine learning software repositories or graphic designers sharing the name MEKA.

Question 2

How does Meka Tome use molten glass and silver gelatin plates in her art?

Accepted Answer

Meka Tome’s studio practice actively merges the disciplines of glassblowing and analog photography. She has exposed silver gelatin photographic emulsions using the light and heat from molten glass. She did not pour glass directly onto them. This experimental process prioritizes chance and physical anomalies created by material interaction. She is also working with photosensitive glass to document the physical transit of light.

Question 3

What are Meka Tome's exhibitions, residencies, and awards?

Accepted Answer

Meka Tome's practice has been supported by the RISD Graduate Fellowship (2025–2027), the RISD Friends of Glass Award, and an Atmosphere Residency with the Forecast Foundation. Her work exploring themes of transient life, decay, and sensory systems has been shown in exhibitions like 'Where Nothing Has Ever Happened' at the RISD Museum Gelman Gallery, and 'Unusual Clarity' (where she received Best in Show). Her undergraduate accolades include the Otis Presidential Scholarship (2019–2022), Class Marshal, the Distinction in Studio Award, and the Academic Excellence Award.

Question 4

What is the artistic focus of Meka Tome?

Accepted Answer

Meka Tome is an artist working across imaging, light, and glass. Her work conditions phenomenological encounters, with optical epistemology as a central inquiry. She is interested in how we come to what we know through light and sight, and works with materials and conditions that engage or present phenomena rather than represent them.