Myrel Chernick received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago after having moved to New York to participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Influenced by the conceptual art she saw around her, she sought to combine her love of literature and writing with light-filled installations. She began adding short phrases to her installations in 1977, influenced by Marguerite Duras, her austere but sensuous language, and her focus on the spaces between the words. Living in New York, Chernick has continued to work with projections and multimedia installations, single channel video and photography, taken a detour to raise twins, curated exhibitions on motherhood, edited The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, and expanded her writing to include longer text/image works. She is currently writing and illustrating a hybrid novel that takes place in her favorite city, Paris.