Artist Constance Pierce Exhibits Work Regionally and Internationally

Painter and printmaker Constance Pierce is one of 14 artists internationally to be chosen by guest curator Ryozo Morishito to exhibit in “The 4th Art On Paper Exhibition 2010,” which opened in March. The exhibition was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in the Toyota City complex in Aichi, Japan.

The artist exhibited a new series of archetypal figurative works on paper that bear witness to the sufferings of the world. Pierce is not afraid to confront these images in all of their darkness and light, and embraces them for the revelations they provide about the human soul.

This series of images was inspired by the last spoken word lines of a musical composition titled “Will You Be There,” by the late performer, composer and humanitarian Michael Joseph Jackson. “The 4th Art on Paper Exhibition 2010” was covered in televised news media in Japan in March.

Pierce, an associate professor of visual arts at St. Bonaventure University, is also showing her artwork regionally in a solo exhibition at the Clara Fritzsche Gallery located in the library of Notre Dame College of Ohio. The exhibition is titled “Lacrymae Rerum: Retrospective Works on Paper.” The show opened with a reception for the artist April 8 and will run through May 15, 2010.

Pierce is drawn toward the archetypal aspects of the Judeo Christian religious experience, but expresses these themes in a contemporary idiom. She often works with images of pilgrimage, lamentation, absolution and transcendence. Pierce uses such themes to flesh out parable, and to reveal the relevance of the ancient stories to our world of dissonance and division.

One series, executed in graphite and blue wash and titled “Lamentations,” offers a visual meditation expressing the haunting and disturbing consequences of war. This series poses questions on issues of faith, tolerance and ethics.

Another series of drawings was informed by images from Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” A third series, done in watercolor, expresses the epiphany of the soul through dance. In addition, the artist is exhibiting a new portfolio of large-scale Giclee prints of her works, published for the first time in this format. The artist collaborated with Martin Studios of Olean to produce this series because of the studio’s artistic excellence in printing.

Pierce is associate professor of painting and drawing at St. Bonaventure University. She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she was awarded the Helen Green Perry Prize for European Travel and Study. She received her advanced degree from the Hoffberger School of Painting of the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, where she studied with the renowned abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan.

Her sketchbooks have been featured in two exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her monotypes and sketchbooks are in the permanent collection of this museum, and the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution (D.C.), the Rare Books Library of the National Gallery of Art (D.C.), Georgetown University Special Collections (D.C.), the International Marion Research Institute of the University of Dayton (Ohio), the Yale Center for British Art: Prints and Drawings (sketchbook archives) and Yale University’s “Art of the Book” Collection in Sterling Library (Conn.).

Her work has been featured through the years in articles and reviews in the Washington Post, Chicago’s New Art Examiner, the Sunday New York Times, the New Haven Register, the Yale Bulletin, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and IMAGE: Art Faith Mystery. An article that Pierce authored titled “OPUS CORDIS: Reflections of a Contemporary Artist Embracing the Drama of Religious Imagery” will be included in a new book, “Art Inspiring Transmutations of Life,” Volume 106 of the Analecta Husserliana series, to be published in June 2010.

Her art can be seen on YouTube as well as her Web site, contancepierce.com.