Craft

Megan is a researcher, designer, and creative with a love for communication –

whether through curriculum design for middle-schoolers, expression through movement, or the translation of designs into functional specifications. While finding her own rhythm after a very product-oriented degree (Industrial Design), she found research, experience, and systems design to be her sweet spot. In these spaces, Megan is most excited by the relationship-building and information gathering. She seeks to challenge traditional norms of design and prioritize ethical and participatory practices.

Professionally,

Megan just finished a role with Johnson & Johnson designing digital tools for pharma field reps. In other UX roles, she's researched and designed products for life insurance, financial literacy, and banking. She's been a design facilitator for Publicolor, Better World by Design 2018, MIT IDDS, and IRC's Mahali Lab. Megan is currently centering projects that feel authentic to co-creative research and design in healthcare, education, and civic spaces.

Personally,

there are many "in progress" creative projects: researching the effects of movement practices on chronic pain, slowly mastering the practice of stone carving (thanks Ken!), and training in modern and contemporary dance.

Facilitator of paper / Independent project

In particular space

My love to collage is really about a discovery of connection. It's a process of discovering the unique characteristics of imagery, taking them beyond the pages (of Architectural Digest), and redefining them through how they connect with other images – bringing them into a new light. And in the simplest of ways, it's a relief from a day of working on the computer to work with my hands.‍

In particular space began as a way to recreate a certain image that came to my mind. It's evolved into a series that explores the possibility of a body within a defined space. A restriction of space that magnifies the subtleties of alignment and tension. Each piece tells its own story. Some representative of emotional moments, others created just as free opportunity to explore.

facilitator of paper, found artifacts

2019 - on going

Movement & video / Independent project

A Body in Frame

As we have been challenged to explore movement within the limitations of our zoom screens, we have also found beauty in a new reality of dance. A Body in Frame explores the limitations and endless possibilities of dance within the frame. It plays with the body in relation to the camera and the magic of editing.

dance, video editing, sound, choreography

2021

2:35

Megan Lighty

Ken Hiratsuka

JoJo Drake

Columbine Macher

Megan Lighty

Sculpture / Pratt Institute

Pratt Legends Award

Every year, Pratt hosts an annual scholarship benefit to support Pratt students. They honor and award creative icons whose works have helped shape the cultural landscape. I was selected to design the 2016 award for the honorees.

abstract form, sculpture

2016

cast aluminum & alabaster

Alvaro Uribe

Sculpture & public installation / Independent project

Fractured

Upon discovering a hidden sculpture garden, a new concrete sculpture was created. With this work, we hoped to add our own mark to the existing sculptural landscape and experimented with the form and play of concrete. Fractured was designed to be stood on and move up and down like a seesaw. However, upon being released from its mold, it split in half. The playfulness was immediately lost but what was gained was deep conversation between its broken halves. It was beautiful mistake that became a sort of truth about the fragility of even the strongest materials.

Inspired by Anselm Kiefer's Étroits Sont les Vaisseaux

sculpture, public installation

2017

concrete & chicken wire

Tianhan Zhang

Keiron de Nobriga

Maryam Turkey

Kyle Ramos

Furniture design & public installation / Brooklyn Museum

180

180 rotating panels compose Boris Anisfield’s Clouds over the Black Sea in an interactive structure designed and built for the Brooklyn Museum. Visitors were encouraged to break traditional museum rules of “no touching” and allowed a hands-on-approach to interacting with the painting. Rotation of the overlapping panels produce a unique composition with every use.

interactive play, furniture design, public installation

2017

5’6”(h) x 5’3”(l) x 18”(w)