Junior Lilly Pierce, using her hands and different tools to make amazing creations hopes to inspire and motivate her peers around her.
Pierce has made sculpture a big part of her life. Her parents are in the arts, her dad a musician and her mom an artist, according to Peirce that’s how she started her love of sculpture and art. Bowie has had many choices of art classes over the years and Pierce has taken that to her advantage. She’s in 3D AP art taught by Ryan Logan. 3D AP art is a college level sculpture arts class that focuses mainly on creating their own art portfolio for college credit.
“I took high school art in 8th grade and we did some sculpture in it and I really enjoyed it,” Peirce said. “In sculpture class we usually focus on ceramics but I really do prefer mixed media.”
Just like everyone else, Pierce has had to start at the beginning at some point. She had taken a high school art class in 8th grade then according to Logan the first year of having her in his class was just about learning how to build and make things without it blowing up in the kiln. Over the years in her art classes she really improved her work and being a part of the art program.
“When she first came into the class we really needed to focus on making things structurally sound,” Logan said, “Lilly has great work ethic and she produces a lot of high quality work.”
Outside of class, Pierce also does her own work during her freetime. Usually she does her work in an environment without distractions and she likes to sit on the floor to help her focus.
“On my own time I work on my own stuff, I like to do mixed mediums, so that involves ceramics, clay, wood, and all sorts of things.” Peirce said
The students around her are especially influenced by Pierce, one student, Senior Manning Adkins, has loved seeing her work.
“Lilly keeps to herself but she’s amazing at what she does,” Adkins said. “Every turn of her work is something different and that really inspires me to try and make my art something different, it’s really cool.”
And other students like Senior Grace Hooks, who is close friends with Pierce. Hooks does more painting than sculpture but they bond with Pierce over both their love of art.
“We really help each other out,” Hooks said, “we bounce ideas off of each other and we work out our pieces together, it’s a lot of fun,”
Pierce uses topics for her art that she feels are important to her, according to peirce they’re more poetic pieces. She uses music to help her get in the right mindset for sculpting, she likes to have a lot of space on the floor with an undisturbed environment. Sculpting has an emotion within it like frustration, relief, happiness, or even sometimes sadness.
“A lot of it’s very emotional.” Pierce said, “I like to explore a lot of deeper themes, like abuse or the human psyche, and how we view death, or things like that.”
Art has influenced Pierce’s life so much throughout the years with her parents being in the arts and also doing art for many years already. It’s something she’s passionate about and cares alot about.
“Sculpture is something I’ve been doing for a long time, it’s a passion and something fun to do.” Pierce said. “Art is a creative outlet for me and it helps me process my emotions, and it has a great community. I meet new people and most of my friends are artists and being able to have people to go to to talk about these things is an important part of sculpting.”
Pierce hopes to be able to bring her art to help influence and inspire others to do art or on a smaller scale just to be inspired to go look at art and appreciate it.
“A lot of my sculptures have a political or a symbolic meaning and I really just hope that those messages get out and people are inspired to research or explore new topics.”
