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GINA PIERLEONI

Craft, Drawing, Fiber, Multidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary Art, Painting, Paper / Book / Illustration, Sculpture / Installation, Visual / Media

Awards Received

Individual Artist

Prior to 2012

I use portraiture to spark conversations about empathy and our common humanity. Portrait painting demands curiosity, stillness and deep observation. These images are acts of deep seeing, pushing past label and judgments; they seek to "de-separate" us. My paintings are multi-layered: drawn, painted, scratched into, stamped and stenciled under, over and through the surfaces. I am painting from the inside out to show the emotional fabric of someone, in addition to how they look. These are real people, alive, changing, genuine and vulnerable.

About the Artist

Gina Pierleoni is a mixed media artist living and working in Baltimore.  She earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and a B.F.A. from the College of New Rochelle (NY) Individual Artist Awards include grants from :the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; the Gottlieb Foundation (emergency grant) and three from Maryland State Arts Council. Recent solo exhibitions include: Stevenson University, MD; Creative Alliance, Baltimore; Uferwerk, Werder, Germany; CCBC, Baltimore.  Recent group exhibition venues include: Towson University, MD; The Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, Baltimore; Courthouse Galleries, Portsmouth, VA; Notre Dame University of Maryland, Baltimore.

GINA PIERLEONI website View Website

Artist's Statement

In every mixed media series she makes, Pierleoni rearranges and combines older components to create a new whole. Portraits of real people placed together form a community or congregation. Older paintings reassembled and reworked become Human Icons recording transformative moments. Torn paintings and to-do lists create paper mosaics; when shaped as arrows they are intentional prayers. Recycled fabrics and repurposed cast offs become hand-sewn figures. Painting Rag Shirts are made from decades of t-shirt rags used in the studio, then fitted and hand sewn back together. Even in the series, Forgetting Memory, her mother’s brain loss inspires ways to piece together new stories with humor and compassion. The Baltimore Sun described my figures as “gloriously human…there's nothing between them and you to keep them from meeting you head-on. It's hard to get too much of an artist who can convey a sense of self-acceptance and strength even in the knowledge of weakness and fallibility.”

Featured Work

Photos

My grandmother, mother and aunts recited daily rosaries into their 80’s and 90’s. Their hands worked a well-worn path from the crucifix to the first few beads, around the loop and back. They prayed, paced and rocked. They prayed while vacuuming, making sauce, changing diapers. Prayers, were in their DNA. I started tearing arrows from old paintings and to-do lists during the 2015 uprisings in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. In heartbreak, I was reminded of the women with their rosaries and my own childhood laps around the beads. For me, tearing arrows has become a form of prayer. I continue to make them through the pandemic, and the passing of friends and family. I tear for strangers and for things I cannot control. There will always be people and places needing love.
The sewn figures parallel my painting and mixed media processes. Stitching is drawing, fabric is paint and attached objects create layers. Through collecting, sorting and valuing, materials headed for the landfill are sewn together to make something whole again. Each figure is made entirely from discarded and re-purposed materials except for thread and paint. Materials have included: electric toothbrush rings, gift bag handles, any small things with holes in them, shoelaces, broken costume jewelry, hospital socks, old beads and buttons, rosaries and medals of saints, graduation tassels, sequins, leather scraps, fabric and yarn. Everything is sewn together with a simple looping stitch.
Come and Go was inspired by my painting class during the pandemic when we couldn't be in person. There's a bowl for each student. Birds, stand-ins for us, dip into the circle for support and fly away in different directions. The horizon line grounds the group. My deceased husband is also included as a bird. The less I understood about where people go after their bodies die, the more credence I gave to birds as intermediaries between worlds, as though they didn't recognize a dividing line. Birds, along with arrows, continue to find a place in my paintings.
During COVID and my husband’s illness and death I turned to birds for solace. I watched for them, listened to their conversations and trusted that no matter what happened in the world and in my life, nests would continue to be made, baby birds would continue to be born and fledge.
Bevin and Grace, former students, are part of an ongoing series of portraits of real people. (#313 & #312). The paintings were started in person and then completed in my studio. Like the other portraits in the series, a story from my time with each of them is written on the back of the panel. The pieces were made as each was separately undergoing big transitions.
Painted Stories is an installation of 60 mixed-media portraits built as a large structure. Most portraits feature real people and each portrait has a story written on the back of the panel. A sample story: "Another Saturday painting Jenn in her butterfly dress, sitting so calmly, no boys, no noise. I added 'hydrogen', the first element, to Jenn's portrait. Her home life was, from the telling of it, like a time bomb... highly flammable like hydrogen. Somehow, she balanced those realities... the calm, the ticking bomb, and the butterfly.”

Videos

Arts in Education

Audiences Types: High School (9-12 grade)