Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary E. Beierle.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Mary. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
It’s shocking to me that I am a working artist. My voyage has been one of a confluence of my curiosities and passions: Female archetypes, politics, vestiges of civilization, Paleolithic art, Native American Wisdom, awe of nature and family – it took so long to get here. My urge to create began after we returned from visiting cave art at Lascaux II in France in the late 1990s. Very vivid images began bubbling up. The caves throughout Europe are limestone, but I was dreaming of clay and mixed materials. This urge to create was relentless. I felt compelled to sign up for a ceramic sculpture class and explore this inexplicable desire in the early 2000s. I thought I would only take one class. It was obvious to me that others who had been studying art all their lives were doing amazing things, but I was struggling to give myself permission to work through the confusing, ugly learning phases. I was using the clay very irreverently – ripping, smashing, covering porcelain with dirt and minerals. When I lived in Japan, I loved the concept of wabe sabe, rustic, imperfect, accidental beauty, and clay was such a natural material. My professors at Chaffey College kept encouraging me to continue. I’m grateful for that because I was having difficulty imagining becoming an artist midlife.
At this time, I was working on the documentary, A Circle of Women which focused on Native American concerns about our planet . Chief Oren Lyons, Native American rights activist and environmentalist, would say to me, “You think you have problems? The glaciers are melting.” Beauty, politics, nature, and humanity all began to collide in my work.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
To follow my urge to create, I first had a multitude of demons to conquer. I didn’t think I deserved to breathe, so how could I pursue my latent dreams of creating and making? I came from a very misogynistic family; I was told women were to the lowest thing on the bottom of the earth. I had much emotional excavating to do to find my voice and shed the detritus of abuse.
Also, society heaps so many bizarre images of women upon us. Not only now, but look at Michelangelo’s Mary in The Pieta. She would have been an older woman, shattered by the death of her son. Yet, she is depicted as a flawless teenager. Or consider Botticelli’s, Birth of Venus, another inimitable, flawless adolescent by which our society defines beauty.
My Excavation Series is birthed out of a need to express transformation. In this series, I seek to capture the transcendence of the imperfect and explore suppressed potentiality. We all encounter struggles and sorrows in this journey called life. I am fascinated that a delicate object, like a flower, has such a powerful spiritual and aesthetic presence and ability to help us and lift our spirits.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
My large sculptures and installation videos often examine the fragile relationship between humans and the natural world while my smaller sculptures examine interior life. I grew up alongside the mountains surrounding Los Angeles and have trekked throughout the American West. Though I have lived in Europe and Asia, I am continuously drawn back to LA. The trembling of the tectonic shifts in this rugged terrain and the visual imprint of that geology are major influences my sculptural and video works. I merge images of landscape with the human figure to explore our fragile relationship with nature.
Making: I am drawn to the physicality of ceramic sculpture. I mix my own clay and rhythmically pound layers of this clay with handmade paddles creating patterns onto the surface. This primitive drumming becomes a celebration and personal ritual of making.
I am also attracted to the alchemical nature of the ceramic process in which earthen materials and heat offer an unpredictable color-saturated palette. The kiln firings add an unexpected element to the creative process because the heat melts and changes the surface and form in unpredictable ways. I may take a year to create the glazes and mineral mixtures that are applied up to twenty layers thick. This accumulation of color stratum provides a unique light refractive luminosity as the glazes melt, flow, pool, and sometimes flake.
I am interested in creating an experience of form and space which the viewer may touch, peer into, sit next to, and encounter from various perspectives. I also aspire to create a contemplative experience with which the viewer might connect symbolically to landscape and environment and perhaps experience a sense of awe and connection beyond themselves.
Do you feel like there was something about the experiences you had growing up that played an outsized role in setting you up for success later in life?
The awe that I felt when trekking through the wilderness was instrumental in helping me survive my childhood and instill my reverence for nature. My brother, Joe, and I would leave our house when I was just six years old with a canteen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hike into the Los Angeles mountains. We’d be gone all day; it was pure joy for me. Then as a teenagers, we backpacked and scuba dived all over California.
School was also a haven for me when I was a child and I am so thankful for my teachers. They let me know that I was valuable and enriched my life with the joy of reading and learning. I am grateful that with a few bound pages in my hand that I could be transported to implausible places.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mebstudio.com
- Phone: 951.538.9494
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: marybeierle
- Facebook: marybeierle
Image Credit:
Meghan Beierle-O’Brien, meghanbob.com
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
