Florence Miller Pierce was known for thought provoking abstract,
non-objective, monochromatic painting rooted in her dedication to Zen
Buddhism and meditation. Many of her works give the appearance of
floating off the wall,
something she achieved with
richly colored and textured geometric shapes---polygons, triangles, and
rectangles---encased in divided layers of transparent resin over colors
that had been softened through mixing with with milled
fiberglass.
Working
with resin to create textures occurred for her in 1969 when she 51
years old and was in her New Mexico studio making foam sculpture.
A chance spill of resin landed on a piece of aluminum foil, and when it
hardened, it 'shimmered', and she was fascinated. Learning that
she could create an interesting effect with resin adhering to mirrored
tiles, "she would continue with the new body of work for nearly 35
years." (Regan) In 2005, the Tucson Museum of Art held a solo
exhibition of work by Florence Miller Pierce, then age 87, and featured
were 33 pieces of resin-on-mirror paintings described as "jeweled bits
of minimalism, delicately colored and sensuously textured.
Sometimes, the thick layers of resin are as pearly and smooth as
flesh. Elsewhere, where Pierce has manipulated the resin while
it's drying; the layers are dimpled, folded like cloth, or even
crumpled like paper. And their forms echo the sculptures that
Pierce abandoned when she had her eureka moment. Shaped into
squares, arches and triangles, they veer into 3-D, hanging out slightly
from the walls and casting shadows in the light." (Regan)
She was
born with the name Florence Miller in Washington DC, and by age 18, had
a serious dedication to art and spiritualism. Her parents ran a
private boarding school. From childhood, she was interested
in art, and nurtured by an art teacher, May Ashton, she visited
museums. Miller studied in DC at the Phillips Gallery and the
Corcoran School of Art.
Having become aware that
Taos, New Mexico was an art center from visiting her grandparents, who
lived there, she persuaded her parents to allow her to go alone to Taos
in 1936 for a summer to study at the Studio School with Emil Bisttram,
who not only was a highly accredited teacher but who also had a
dedication to meditation and spiritualism. She returned to Taos
in the winter of 1937, and the next year, she returned, at Bisttram's
invitation, to take part in the forming of the Transcendental Painting
Group (TPG). These founders were nine artists dedicated to
abstract art expression, grounded in creative art imagination and the
transporting of painting beyond objective recognition. In 1938,
they banded together to share ideas and organized mutual exhibition
venues that made the public aware of fnon-objective and abstract
art. She was the youngest member and outlived all the other
members of the organization, which held together for several years
until World War II sidetracked their ability to remain a cohesive
entity.
Four decades later, it was written that her
austere, abstract works of art reflecting color, beauty and natural
forms, were indeed a synthesis of the teachings of Emil Bisttram who
inspired his students with the words "Idea, Shape, Color and
Form." Of her work, Pierce reflected that she had been "trying to
do the purest work I knokw how. What comes to mind is the Zen
word that means original mind, about emptying mind and space." (Regan)
Through
Bisttram, Florence Miller met Horace Towner Pierce, an art student and
one of the founders of TPG, and they married in 1938. He was
described as looking like the pipe-smoking movie star, Fred
MacMurray. The couple lived in New York and California, where in
1939, she and her husband, along with other members of the Transcendental Painting Group, exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition. By 1950, they
had settled in Albuquerque. They had two children, one whom died
several months after birth.
Horace Pierce, age 41, died suddenly
in 1958, when Florence was 39. She remained in Albuquerque,
continuing her commitment to geometric abstract and non-objective
painting and relief sculpture of layered dried pigmented resin.
Some viewers regard her artwork as "distillations of the New Mexico
landscape" with their "stark geometry and earthy color palette" (Regan)
that suggests adobe.
However, she was not an artist who did a
lot of interacting with other artists as she worked pretty much in
isolation and viewed herself as a 'silent artist'. She became a
strong admirer of Agnes Martin, the reclusive painter from Taos who was
her peer and whose minimalist paintings brought record-breaking prices
in New York auction houses. In 2004, Pierce, Martin and the
potter, Maria Martinez, were honored in a group show, In Pursuit of Perfection, in Santa Fe at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Florence Pierce died at age 90 at her home in Albuquerque on October 25, 2007
Written by Lonnie Pierson Dunbier
Sources: Margaret Regan, "Reflective, Like Jewels", Tucson Weekly, October 13, 2005,
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Arts/Content?oid=74136
Jennifer Riley, "Florence Pierce", The Brooklyn Rail, May 2006, http://www.brooklynrail.org/2006/05/artseen/florence-pierce
Obituary, Art in America, December 2007
Albuquerque Tribune Online: Interview with the artist
http://web.abqtrib.com/archives/diversions01/071301_diversions_pierce.shtml
Peter Hastings Falk (editor), Who Was Who in American Art
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