Lecturer of Ceramics, Drawing and Art History at Adelaide College of the Arts, Merrilyn has won the Sydney Myer Australia Day Ceramics Award, Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria and is collected nationally and internationally. Merrilyn has worked on archaeological digs in Thailand and Cambodia for the Art Gallery of South Australia as a ceramic adviser for the Department of Archaeology in Cambodia.

In her close observation of the botanical and geological forms along the Fleurieu Peninsula since a child, Merrilyn has produced unique ceramics using sophisticated techniques and firing at high temperature. This has produced a depth of detail in her work with delicate patterns and textures. Her series of ceramics ‘Gifts from the Sea’ are about her research into echinoderms (sea urchins), of which fossils have been
found from the Cambrian period approximately 150 million years ago.