Solo exhibition: Rumination on Dante, Scripture and Human Suffering ~ I am compelled by Biblical narrative expressed in a contemporary idiom. I often work with images of pilgrimage, lamentation, absolution and rebirth. Such images flesh out parable and reveal to me the ancient archetypes once again reborn in our world of dissonance and division. These sacred texts, in all of their consuming drama, are played out in our most inward journeys. Christ and Judas abide within each of us. I need to be vulnerable to the synchronistic entrance of the spiritual, for the spirit uses sentient forms as metaphor.

1. 3/24/2014 Yale University Divinity School Library: Exhibits and Publications
http://www.library.yale.edu/div/exhibits/Pierce2014.htm 1/2
Visual Rumination on Dante, Scripture and World Suffering
by artist Constance Pierce
An exhibit in the Yale Divinity Library -­ March 20-­April 25, 2014
On display in the Day Missions Reading Room from March 20 to April 25 is
artwork of Constance Pierce, a former ISM research fellow and Yale Divinity
School resident-­artist. Pierce is a retired associate professor of art from St.
Bonaventure University in New York state. Her sketchbooks were twice featured
at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her art is
included in this museum's collection, as well as the Smithsonian Institution's
Archives of American Art, the International Marion Research Institute, the
National Gallery of Art's rare book library, and the Yale Center for British Art,
Prints and Drawings sketchbook archive. She has exhibited for three decades,
both regionally and nationally, and most recently in Japan.
Her work has been featured in articles and reviews in the Washington Post,
New Art Examiner, New York Times, New Haven Register, Journal of the Print
World, and Image: Art, Faith, Mystery. Constance also designs numerous
seminars for institutions and private groups in her original special expertise
titled "Imaging Journal: Creative Renewal and the Inward Journey."
Artist's statement about the works exhibited in the Yale
Divinity Library:
I am compelled by Biblical narrative expressed in a contemporary idiom. I often
work with images of pilgrimage, lamentation, absolution and rebirth. Such
archetypal themes flesh out parable and reveal the ancient stories, once again
reborn, in our current world of dissonance and division. The sacred scriptures, in
their mythic and consuming drama, are also played out in our most inward
journeys.
In the series of drawings currently displayed, my intent is to bear witness to the
suffering and alienation of Christ resurrected in the dispossessed within our own
midst. Sometimes my images are disturbing because I hope to disrupt
complacency and bestir compassion. I desire to express the betrayed and
afflicted, yet also the presence of Divinity in ministering emissaries alive upon
the earth. The Christ and Judas abide within each of us. The moment of
crucifixion or resurrection is not ancient history, but is reenacted anew within
each soul.
The watercolor series on exhibition emerges out of a somewhat different
genesis. Through these allegorical images, I hope to incarnate the radiant
energy and spiritual import of the human form in the epiphany of dance, as well
as the archetypal gestures of the human soul in the solitude of personal
anguish. My intention is to illuminate the transcendent aspects of life, especially
those experiences where we are entrained by a grace beyond ordinary
perception.
If one could learn to read the gestures of trees or the movements of clouds with
clarity, one might be able to decipher them as messengers;; to read them like
ancient dancers are read. They are signs upon the flesh of the earth, a
sensuous calligraphy, ever pressing into our dim vision. It is not enough to
arrange, however sensitively or cleverly, visual elements. I believe an artist
needs to be open and vulnerable to the synchronistic entrance of the spiritual,
for the elements of the spirit often use sentient forms as a metaphor.