Did We Meet At The Gallery?

Mye Coates, Founder of MERBOH Art Lab

Oh hey, glad you found me!

If I had to sum myself up in one line, it’d go something like this: I’m the upside down, the inside out, and the left on the right. Translation? I gravitate toward ideas that flip convention on its head. I’m endlessly curious, slow to accept anything at face value and wired to create.

I was born in Washington, D.C, majored in business management at school (boring) and spent years climbing the corporate ladder at a Fortune 500 company with a concentration in tech. Cue the plot twist that helped me find my true calling: I forged a unicorn role for myself becoming the in-house storyteller — translating complex systems into visual narratives for C-suite leaders. With total creative autonomy, hundreds of original assets, and a crash course in balancing logic with imagination — That experience shaped my current ethos as an artist, it was the activation.

My work sits at the intersection of modern design, metaphysics, and human potential. Ancient knowledge informs my artistic practice—universal principles understood tens of thousands of years ago that remain deeply relevant today. Using simple yet unexpected materials, I translate age-old teachings into contemporary visual form.

My aesthetic? Modern minimalism meets playful soul — Think airy, industrial, and futuristic, anchored with archival elements and just enough quirky oddities to make you tilt your head. I love recontextualizing the familiar — pulling objects and images from their expected places and assembling them into something unapologetically offbeat. Check out my alternate IG handle MercantileBohemian for case studies with a home interior spin. For me, design is an open-ended question where function is negotiable, form is holographic, context is fluid, and creativity is the one rule that bends them all.

Outer space also fascinates me —The stars tell stories I can’t resist with endless sparkle, boundless mystery and effervescent galaxies spinning in the abyss. Whenever I see images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, existential questions arise in me: Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we headed?  Like a cosmic riddle, it reminds me of the unseen forces of creation — vast, full of wonder and brimming with infinite potential. And so here I sit as a freelance creative, broadcasting from my own unique coordinates in space — passion-led, purpose-fed, and diving into the stardust ahead.

My work has been recognized both domestically and internationally, with exhibitions in Amsterdam, Washington, D.C., New York, and Virginia, leading to commissioned projects in Northern Maryland.

Everything I make reinforces agency. It asks if reality is responsive (which I believe it is) who are we choosing to be within it?!?

Check out this article published by Voyage Baltimore Magazine where I share more personal details about my journey.

Some of the things that light me up are in the scroll!

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