Florence Miller Pierce: Into the Light Exhibition

Saturday, July 6th, 2024

2:00 PM - 6:00 PM

The Wright Contemporary Gallery

Florence Miller Pierce (1918-2007) went through several incarnations in her long life as an artist. At the young age of 19, she was studying with Emil Bisttram in Taos, as part of a group of painters with deeply spiritual goals. She joined the brief-lived Transcendental Painting

Group in the Southwest as one of only two women members (the other was Agnes Pelton). In 1958 she experimented with sumi ink paintings and sculptures in balsa wood. Her finest works date from 1969, when she discovered the possibilities of poured resin, creating sculptures that seemed to give off their own transcendent luminosity.

The show at the Wright will include a number of works from the 1950s-60s, but will concentrate on the poured resin pieces from later in her career, some of them outsized geometric shapes that bear comparison with the finest Minimalist sculpture of the period. Learn more.

Pictured: Florence Pierce, conjoined semicircles resin relief, 1986

The Wright Contemporary is a gallery in Taos, NM, dedicated primarily to the artists of northern New Mexico. Named for the late Ira Wright, a Santa Fe-based artist and benefactor, the gallery offers approximately eight shows per year, curated by art journalist and director Ann Landi and artist Michelle Cooke. The gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday, 2:00 to 6:00pm.