Missy Pierce

Missy Pierce
Boca Raton, Florida, USA

STATEMENT

My artwork speaks to the multi-cultural audience of South Florida, especially as we wrestle here with the idea of what is “exotic.”

When I create, I am often exploring these issues of identity. Lately, this subject has infused my artwork as I watch border tensions escalate around the word and how immigration policies are drastically shifting in our country. As a product of mixed heritage myself, my creative objective is to capture, contrast and combine the different traditions, designs, colors, and sounds that collide within us as we form our own identities. Because I understand what it means to feel “misplaced” or awkward in the cultures of both parents, I realize it is these differences that form who we are and what makes us interesting. At the same time, these differences serve to divide us into a world of “us and them.” This tension between isolation and belonging is what I have been exploring in my artwork this year.

BIO

Missy Pierce creates multi-media art that explores the nature of identity. She often works between 2D and 3D forms to create paintings, mosaics, assemblage and artist books that address themes of belonging and isolation as she focuses on multi-cultural issues and the complicated sense of identity within each of us.

Currently, Pierce is an artist in residence at The Arts Warehouse in Delray Beach, Florida and can usually be found there painting unless she is working off site on a public art commission for another city. Before moving her studio to Delray Beach, she was an artist in residence at the Bailey Contemporary Art Center (BaCA) in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Pierce’s public art may be seen throughout South Florida. She is represented by Rosenbaum Fine Art (RFA Decor) in Boca Raton, as well as by the Arts Warehouse in Delray Beach, Florida. Her art has been part of international art projects, including a collaborative mural in Avignon, France, and exhibitions based in New Zealand, Great Britain, Germany, and Brazil. Pierce also teaches art in Sicily and Lucca, Italy and in Downtown West Palm Beach, Florida.

She trained as an artist at Esprit Mosaique in Les Angles, France; the Oregon College of Arts and Craft and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon; The Institute of Mosaic Art in Berkeley, California; The Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University; as well as at the Museum of Art School in Boca Raton, Florida. After getting her Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Nevada, Reno, she obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Diego School of Law. Pierce practiced law as an attorney in California for a decade before moving to Florida to work as an artist.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]
www.missypierce.com

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