Sarah Pierce: Queen of The Mechanical Anthropomorphic Beasts
The Horns Of Awesomeness
On a recent work trip to Boston, I made the acquaintance of multi disciplinary artist, Sarah Pierce. It seems there is a small artists colony tucked away behind a junk yard in an old factory. It was in that warehouse full of artists, crafts people and dungeons, uh, I mean, electronics repair shops, that I met Sarah Pierce.
I’ve only visited Boston five times and while I am growing a greater client base in the area my free time is typically spent holed up in the dungeon nerding out on the internet in between sessions. Only last night I got a knock at the door at about 11 p.m. There stood lovely tiny woman who looked surprised to see me. We’d passed one another in the hall and I’d spied her walking around her apartment in her underwear while smoking on the fire escape (which I confessed to her with feigned guilt hoping to get a bite-I didn’t, she’s pretty straight it would seem) though we had not been properly introduced. “I’m a friend of Danni’s” I explained. “Well, would you like to come over?” Hoping for a shower and some company I accepted her offer.
She showed me into her studio. The space was littered with wires, circuit boards, welding equipment and tiny glass beads hanging from a huge board suspended from the ceilings. “Umm, I’m kinda a mess” she said apologetically bending over to pick up some trash. “That’s my glow worm piece” she explained. I already knew I was going to like this woman. “What’s that!?” I squealed reaching for what I thought for a moment was a crown of thorns. “Oh! It’s a head piece! I made that.” she handed it to me and popped it on feeling instantly like the queen of the beasts.
We sat down to chat as she strung glass beads on lengths of fishing line to add to the 3,000 lengthes of beads strung on fishing wire that she had designed to replicate silk worms. “I’m learning how to program LED lights” she said. “It’s kind hard but I’m making this for a burner party next weekend”. She showed me an amazing video of real live glow worms trapping their prey in a deep dark cavern. It was delicious. “I’m kind of obsessed with anthropamorphism” she confessed.
“Me too” I breathed lustily.
She showed me some of her animation (that’s what keeps the lights on and the rent paid) and concert set design work. She also showed me some amazing films of her kinetic pieces. I shared with her the work of my lastest art crush, Gina Kamensky and she squealed “I am so jealous! I am so competitive! I want to do stuff like that! I just don’t have the skill set yet! Her work is so polished and clean…” she trailed off.
“Well you know she’s probably about thirty years older than you, you know.” I assured her.
“I know… But I don’t care. I am still jealous. I wish she would mentor me.”
“My last girlfriend was also an interdisciplinary artist and she was always frustrated by having to learn a new craft or skill, for example, programing an LEDs. Is that ever a frustration for you?”
“No, I love being interdisiplinary, I love learning new things. The challenge. Except for when I am on a tight deadline.” She glanced over at the enormous chandalier of glow worm threads hanging suspended from the ceiling. Her grey tabby batted at one of them, lazily.
“How many beads on a line?” I asked her.
“You really don’t have to help.”
“No, really I enjoy your company.”
And so we sat there until her art school friends showed up to take over. I left although her art school friends were incredibly cute, they had work to do. It’s really too bad she’s straight… I went back to the dungeon and have since been coveting her half man half goat head piece and wondering what I can possibly offer her as barter for it…
July 27, 2011 at 10:43 pm
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