My conversation with Ann Pierce came about because
when I was a student at the University of California at Chico, Ann was
my watercolor instructor. We began our talk with a short discussion
of Ann's formative years, the influences from her artistic mother and
father, and how she got started making art. Can you tell me a little
about your formative years?
I was born and raised in Boulder,
Colorado. My father, Frederick C. Trucksess, taught art at the University
of Colorado from 1927 to 1964, for thirty seven years. He taught sculpture
and painting, and half way through his teaching career, he specialized
in Pre-Columbian, Asian, and Primitive art history courses.
Mother, Frances Trucksess, was Supervisor
of Art in the Boulder public school system for sixteen years. As an
art education specialist, she worked directly with the children, making
it through every grade from kindergarten through ninth at least once
a month. Because some of the teachers had no background in art at
all, she also worked with them, giving presentations to help them
understand how to teach art and use it in their classrooms. She wrote
a book, Creative Art, Elementary Grades, (Pruett Press,
1962), to aid teachers in understanding, appreciating, and presenting
art projects at appropriate grade levels. I helped with the illustrations.
The University wanted to hire her in the Art Education Department
but they couldn't because of a nepotism rule. At that time, husband
and wife couldn't teach in the same institution. So, when Dad retired,
they hired Mother. She started teaching at the University when she
was 70 years old!
So, as both my parents were artists,
I grew up in that environment with art all around me and the materials
available to me. Whatever I wanted to do, I was able to do.
How old were you when you did your first art piece?
I remember being four years old.
I remember because it since has made a real impression on me. I made
a little design with bright colors. It was nothing in particular.
I don't even remember calling it anything. But Mother was really pleased
with it and showed it to a friend of hers, Dorothy Eisenbach, who
was also teaching in the University Art Department and who had gone
to school with her at the Pennsylvania Art Academy in Philadelphia.
Dorothy was visiting Mom. I was standing right there looking up at
them when Mother showed her this little painting I had done. Dorothy
said "You really must encourage Annie to go into art. She has
such a beautiful sense of design." All I remember doing as a
child is that one painting. Her comment didn't register at the time,
but it somehow stayed with me. I recalled it later on in life after
I started making art. For the most part, I shied away from art because
both my parents were artists. Perhaps, unconsciously, I felt the pressure
of competition. Everywhere I went people would say, Oh, your mother
and father are such great artists, you know. Or people would say,
Oh, you're Franny Trucksess' daughter, aren't you?
Mother kept encouraging me to take
art classes. I had one required art class in junior high and the teacher,
Patty Caldwell, was a personal friend of Mother's. She was a very
strict teacher. I remember working very hard and the only grade she
gave me was a "B," so naturally, I was disappointed. But,
like with my Dad, who was the only teacher I had in graduate school
who gave me a "B" grade, probably because I was his daughter
and he didn't want to appear as if he was over doing it, I think she
probably felt some hesitation to give me an "A" because
she was my mother's good friend.
Then, when I was in high school, Mother
encouraged me to take one art class every year. Annie, just take one
art course, she'd say. I finally enrolled in a class and the first
thing that happened when I walked into the room was that the teacher
introduced me as the daughter of Mrs. Trucksess.
She said to her class, Oh, you all know Mrs. Trucksess, don't you?
They had loved having her come to their classroom when they were in
grade school.
They all said, Yes, yes.
They just loved Mom.
Then she said, Well, we have her daughter Ann Trucksess in class with
us!
And that just did it! I dropped that class like it was a hot potato.
I didn't take art again until my junior year in college.
But Mother still said to me, Annie, just take one art course, just
take one, just for me, take one art course.
Finally, in my junior year I enrolled in a design class. I went home
after registration and said, Mom I've got something to tell you.
What is it? she asked.
I said, You better sit down.
Oh Annie, it's alright if you're pregnant, she said. We'll raise the
baby. We'll take care of the baby.
And then I told her I enrolled in a design class. Of course, she was
terribly pleased.
Well, that did it, I took on art as a major, but I'd been through
Romance Languages, Geology, Climatology, English, all of those before
I finally switched to an Art major with an English minor.
How, then,
did you wind up in Northern California?
Well, I was married (in Colorado)
before I finished my Master of Fine Arts degree and got pregnant right
away. Those were hard times for me trying to finish the degree because
I was so sick with my pregnancy and my feelings were right on the
surface. If anybody said anything to me, I'd burst into tears. Going
through the orals was just awful. I made it through somehow or other,
got my degree, and continued having children. I had four children
within a period of five years. They were coming fast, one right after
another. (Then I had one more child after I moved to California!)
Things weren't going well (in the
marriage), so I got a divorce and had to decide what to do to earn
enough money to live on. I had a friend who was interested in helping
me set up private classes. She helped set up the books, the financial
aspect of doing business. I taught private classes three days a week
and every weekend in my garage which I had turned into a studio classroom.
I had 75 students total for the almost three years I did this. The
students just kept coming back. I had students ranging from six to
ninety-six years old. It worked out pretty well, but since I was furnishing
all the supplies, I wasn't making any money on it. I didn't know how
to do it the right way. Even with teaching summer classes at the University,
I couldn't make ends meet.
I went back to the personnel office
at the University and started putting in applications for a variety
of different places. I was accepted at Boulder High School and at
four colleges, one of which was CSU, Chico in California. Reading
about all the different places, trying to make a decision, I finally
decided on Chico because with the mountains close by, it sounded the
most like Boulder. But, when I came, I found the mountains nothing
like the Boulder mountains!
I came out to Chico in May 1964,
before the semester I was to begin teaching, to look for a house or
apartment to live in. John Ayres, the Department Chairperson at the
time, took me around, introduced me to the President and all the instructors
in the department, had me over for dinner. He was really very nice
and made me feel like this was where I wanted to be.
I knew I had the job, but I got the
real interview afterwards. It took place in my kitchen in Boulder.
One of the officials from Chico State University was coming to Denver
for a conference and John told him to stop by Boulder to interview
me. We sat down at my kitchen table and did the interview right there,
with one of my little kids sitting on the potty, and the others running
around the house! He went back, made his report, and I received a
letter in the mail saying I was accepted for the position.
This was in 1964 when discrimination
against women still existed. I was hired at Chico State at the lowest
paid position there was, something like a lecturer, and had four kids
in my care. I took home $350 a month. I paid $125 for rent, had four
kids to care for and food to buy on what was left over. I taught four
day classes and one night class, so I had to get a sitter to take
care of the kids. It just wasn't enough money. To earn enough to support
my family, I took every extra job that I could find. I taught painting
workshops, teacher workshops in Tehema, Glenn, and Butte Counties.
The word got around that I was willing to do this, although, those
side jobs took time away from my kids.
And time away from making your own art, I suppose.
Yes. I had to give a show the first
year I was there, so I was up all night every night, painting. I had
sold most of the paintings I had done in Boulder because I didn't
want to lug them with me when I moved. At the end of my first year,
when I was 33, Janet Turner (printmaker and professor) went to bat
for me. She got me from the lowest paid position to an assistant professor
position which helped financially. She took it on herself to get that
promotion for me. I really appreciated her efforts.
After moving to Chico, I eventually
married again, and we moved into the big house in the country. My
youngest kid, Jay, was born then. He was seven years younger than
the last of the four I had had in Boulder.
Were you hired with the expectation that you would
start the watercolor program at Chico State?
No. The work I had sent in with my
application were mostly oils. I had gotten my degree in oil painting
and ceramics. So what they had seen were oils with 3 or 4 watercolor
paintings.
I taught a painting class, two form
and color classes which later became design, and two basic drawing
courses. After the first year, John Ayres talked to me about splitting
the painting class, doing both watercolor and oil in the same class.
Interested in watercolor, I said sure, that sounded good to me, however,
I really had to get busy and start learning how to paint in watercolors!
I had had only two classes in watercolor during graduate school and
that was it. I worked hard to develop some proficiency with the medium,
and felt I was constantly stretching to keep a day ahead of my students.
When I could afford it, I signed up for watercolor workshops with
highly reputable professionals in the field. Although the overall
influence from workshops was minimal (as the time was too short and
the instructors too many), it was enlightening to see the versatility
of the medium and how differently each artist worked with it.
At the time, was it unusual to put so much focus
on watercolor painting at the University level?
Watercolor was never considered painting
in the fine art sense, but, soon, after I started teaching it, watercolor
societies started blooming. I still don't think it's thought of as
a true art form, but I feel like I've contributed some to its progression.
I wish it were considered a major medium. It should be because it
is so versatile.
Eventually, I said to John, You know
oil and water just don't mix. I don't think I can teach the two courses
in the same classroom. So he set me up with a special watercolor class
in the design room, and I taught oil painting in another room. At
that time the art department was scattered all over campus, and I
had to run from one classroom in Taylor Hall clear across the campus
to another building to teach a back to back class. But, at that age
it didn't make any difference, I could do the running, but I couldn't
do it now if I had to!
One watercolor class eventually became
two. Students would take a beginning class, then go into intermediate
painting, either watercolor or oil. In those years, acrylics started
becoming popular so some of our people began working with acrylics,
however, my class was strictly watercolor. And because of the emphasis
at that time, it was transparent watercolor technique. Later, I started
introducing opaque, gouache, and various techniques other than transparent.
What is it that drives you to be an artist? Do you
feel compelled, or is there a physical and/or emotional experience that
you get from the process?
I think there is a certain compulsion.
I certainly miss it when I don't do it. The process is the most important
part of it for me. Once the painting is finished I can either like
it or not like it, but it was the process that got me to the end.
People have asked me, Don't you wish you had that painting back? I
say, Well, I really like it, but I was finished with it. I don't need
it any more. I can only think of three or four that I wish I had back.
People are attracted
to certain themes, subjects, or ideas of one kind or another. I find
myself intensely attracted to some kind
of visual stimulus. The impact of and excitement I feel for this is
insistent and I find it difficult to concentrate on other tasks at
hand. Both consciously and subconsciously my mind is immediately formulating
paintings. Perhaps, the initial impact is the result of my response
toward abstract form - the potential for design, color, texture, pattern,
shape, rather than any deep philosophical relationship to my being.
The psychological or philosophical reasons for my attraction become
evident only after the paintings in a series progress.
Artists have a way of communicating
and sharing experiences. When I experience something, I'm anxious
to get my response or experience down on paper in visual terms, to
allow others the opportunity to be a part of the excitement. This
is why the painting is created. Some people might not see something
as terribly interesting, and being able to call their attention to
this is exciting.
Besides the
idea of being inspired or excited by something you see in the external
world and wanting to share that excitement, is there any kind of political
or social commentary or personal subtext in your work?
How I feel about things is personal
enough. There are no deep-seated philosophical ideas, I'm just trying
to express what I enjoy. I'm not trying to make a statement about
my philosophy or the world. My feelings are there and that makes it
personal. If I wanted to dig deep I could probably say this relates
to my childhood in one way or another, or this relates to an experience
I had with my mother and father, but I don't think that's necessary.
In fact, I don't want to do that. It doesn't appeal to me. A lot of
the recent teaching at the university level is based on the experience
of the student from childhood to adult hood, and that's fine, but
it's not my approach. I like to paint what I want to paint, and I'll
use any method I can find to paint it.
The artist Nancy Spero once said that the reason
she painted on small pieces of paper was because of the sensitive sexual
nature of her images and content. She didn't want her children to see
what she was drawing. With small drawings, she could easily slip the
pieces of paper into a drawer if the kids wandered into her studio while
she was working. She then took those fragmented pieces and glued them
to a long scroll of white paper which was hung as an installation in
a gallery space. In that way, her role as woman and mother strongly
affected not only her art making process, but also her content and the
way the final image looked, reflecting the fragmentation that is so
often a part of a woman's life as wife, mother, woman, chauffeur, chief
cook and bottle washer, and artist, etc. How has being a woman and mother
of five impacted your painting, subject and content, or process? Is
it manifested visually in your painting?
Well, raising a family is a time consuming
effort. You have to squeeze your painting time in as best you can.
There are some paintings that don't work because there are so many
other things that are interfering with your concentration. I used
to reserve Fridays for painting because I didn't have classes on that
day and the kids were in school. I'd look forward to Fridays so I
could paint, and then on the weekends I could be with the kids. It
turns out that I was doing twelve loads of laundry per weekend and
cleaning the house! There were days when I just took off to do things
with the kids. It's hard. It's harder for women than it is for men.
A lot of men have had wives who are interested in letting them do
their thing and in giving support so he can do his work. What every
woman artists needs is a wife! I can sit for six hours straight when
there's nothing to disturb me.
The kids shared in my art work. I've
gotten lots of criticism from them, both good and bad. In that way,
they were part of the work I did. I did a lot of my painting outside
at one time. I'm not as comfortable doing that anymore, but I did
one of a field of poppies with rocks here and there in the painting.
I showed it to my oldest daughter, Amy. She
said, Well Mom, I don't have my glasses on, but why'd you put the
bunny rabbits in there?
My
interest in painting dress patterns came from sewing their clothes.
(One of Ann's paintings from this series was titled
Matrices, derived from mater, meaning "mother" or
"that within or from which something originates." As this
series progressed, the paintings became metaphors for motherhood,
and because in the still life setup, Ann had overlaid the dress patterns
on natural backgrounds of grapevines and blackberries, it also spoke
to the concept of "Mother Nature." Of course, also associated
with the idea of motherhood, one can't overlook the symbolism inherent
in the use of grape and blackberry vines with their thorns, alluding
to the ideas of fertility and sacrifice.)
The kids were also involved with
the development of the Empty Sack series, which started with
an innocent painting of orange-packing sacks hanging in the barn of
a friend who has an orange orchard. When my family saw the painting,
I became literally swamped with
bags of all kinds: currency sacks from banks where my two daughters
worked; bean and vegetable bags from my son who managed a farmers
cooperative; grain sacks from my husband who fed the livestock; sacks
another son found at a garage sale in Eugene, Oregon, and the empty
sacks (skins) discarded by my third son's snake. The enthusiasm spread
to the wrapping of my Christmas presents in all kinds of sacks, which
I opened for the occasion and then repacked for the watercolor paintings.
The first painting
of the orange packing sacks was nothing more than a response to form,
color, 
arrangement,
and shape. As the paintings progressed, I began to realize that the
bags had pregnant, maternal aspects. The sacks my family members were
giving me had symbolic relationships to themselves. These paintings
occurred 
at
a time when the children were getting married, packing up andleaving
home: thus, Empty Sacks.
Tribal Presence, the last painting
in the "Sack" series, is really a record of an occasion
when the "tribe," the scattered children, were all back
home for Christmas vacation. The word "presence" has a double
meaning - the whole family's attendance as well as the exchange of
gifts.
Your paintings are very powerful, visually and emotionally.
Has anyone ever said you paint too powerfully for a woman?
No, but I notice that men are attracted
to my paintings. They really seem to like the Southwest scenery. It's
interesting. I don't know if it's equally attractive with women.
I've
thought of my paintings as fairly masculine, especially the most recent
Canyons and Upper Bidwell Park series. In a way, it's the subject,
because the Southwest subject itself is very powerful. I feel like
what I'm looking at is a masculine subject and that's what I'm trying
to express. And I can't express that feeling of power and masculinity
about the subject without using bold colors and shapes.
I paint the way I feel like painting
at the time I'm attracted to something. If it's a gentle subject and
I feel like painting that way, then that's the way I'll paint it.
If it's a big bold Southwestern scene, I'll paint it bold.
The subject and content of your work has changed
over the years. Is your work influenced by changes in your location,
or what you are going through personally, or the art of the times?
My
work changes all the time. I've been criticized for having so many
different ways of painting. My first major paintings were abstractions
and it seems I've come full circle through semi-abstraction, representation,
and back to abstraction again; from colorful to subdued and back to
colorful. Environment has played a heavy role in its influence on
my work. Most of the paintings I did in Colorado were vertical and
were influenced by the mountainous scenery. In Colorado the mountains
went straight up. When I came to California, to this valley, everything
turned out to be horizontal. 
An artist is influenced by everything.
I can remember being inspired by things I read while in school, and
it having an influence on what I was going to paint. I was taking
an art history class and the image of the Deposition of Christ, an
altar piece, stuck with me. I'm not a religious person particularly,
but it really made an impression on me. In watercolor class, I did
sketch after sketch and many small paintings of this painting. Never
in my life had I put so much effort into any thing. This is how my
Dad used to paint. He'd do one study after another and toss them away,
then do another study, and he'd do tracings and more tracings, and
he'd finally get it on the canvas and start painting. I work more
like my Mom who was a very spontaneous person and would not even use
a pencil; she would just start painting.
Back then, I remember doing all kinds
of preparations for this one painting and when I finally completed
it, my instructor said, Hand me those sketches, hand me the painting.
She took them up to the front of the class, pinned everything up on
the board, and said to the class, This is what you should be doing
to create a painting. And I didn't really feel that way at all. I
learned from that experience that every bit of creativity I had for
the painting, for the idea, went into the sketches, and the sketches
were wonderful little things. They were spontaneous, but the painting
itself was just pure drudgery. I finally got to the point where I
felt I could paint it, and it turned out to be just a lot of hard
work.
A lot of times, the way you paint
has a lot to do with how creative a piece is. Things happen as you
paint, you know this, and if you take advantage of those things, make
the changes that you need to make, it's a much more creative experience
than doing all these heavy preparatory sketches.
Were you affected by art that was happening around
you?
Well, my graduate work at the University
was abstract. I'm sure a lot of that was influenced by the abstract
expressionists because that was what was happening in the fifties.
I was influenced by Jimmy Ernst, the son of Max Ernst. He was an abstract
expressionist. I was doing very linear abstractions, not non-objective,
but abstractions derived from subject matter, very linear and colorful.
Jimmy Ernst taught a summer class at the University of Colorado. He
was impressed with what I was doing and then I realized it was because
his stuff was very similar to mine.
Who are some of the painters besides Jimmy Ernst
that have influenced you?
Well, I guess if I like them, I've
been influenced, although I can't say that I've been directly influenced
by anyone. One of my favorites is Paul Klee. It's the abstraction
and symbolism in his work. Another more recent influence would be
Wolf Kahn.
Kahn uses strong subjective color in his landscapes
and his work has a soft textural quality like your recent canyon paintings.
Yes, I guess that's a very pointed
influence. I've never felt a direct influence, but I love his work.
Are there other people in your life who have influenced
your directions with your art?
All my teachers have given me direction,
either by negative or positive criticism, that has pushed me in a
different ways.
What was one of the biggest pushes?
I was a beginning painting student
and one of my first watercolor teachers, the one that hung my stuff
up on the wall saying this is the way you should paint, came around
to where I was painting. At that time I was using a lot of browns.
She said, I like this, but why did you put in the "shit brown"?
That really made an impression on
me! I've remembered that phrase "shit brown" ever since,
and avoid using browns. I tell my students, Watch those neutral colors.
I don't say it the way she did. I tell them to paint in any color
they want, but use bright colors to get there. You can get down to
any neutral you want with washes and various techniques, layers of
colors, and it makes a much better neutral than taking it out of a
tube.
When you are painting, are you painting for yourself
or do you paint for the viewer? What do you want people to get or see
when they look at your work?
Usually, I'm painting for myself,
but I also want to create a visual image of what I feel for the subject
so that other people can see what I saw and perhaps have the same
experience.
If they do or don't get it, does it make a difference?
In some cases it does, because I work
so hard to bring across this feeling or idea and if they don't catch
that, sometimes I'm disappointed.
One of my students said to me, I want
you to talk to me about this painting. So I told her what the technique
was and the subject and how I felt about it, that I loved the fog
rolling in over the Butte Creek Canyon, used to take my dad for drives
up there, and took lots of photographs.
And she said, Oh, I thought it was an ocean!
Oh, okay.
It does have that feeling and I'm fine with that. That doesn't distract
from the feeling at all. You look out across the canyons and you see
the fog and it's very much like the feeling of an ocean.
It bothers me that people will look
at a painting and say, Oh I see a donkey up there in that corner.
Do you see that donkey? If I'm still working on it, I'll take the
donkey out!
But anything that has to do with the
feeling of the subject, not the subject itself, but the attitudes
and the response I have toward the subject, is fine. They may also
feel they have a completely different feeling.
So, the experience a viewer brings to a painting
contributes to his or her understanding and appreciation of your work?
Yes. I don't care how they interpret
it, it's their business. But, if they can catch some of that feeling,
that's my communication. That's what's important to me.
Can you tell me how you get from idea to finished
product?
I get ideas or inspiration from the
photographs I've taken on location. Photographs are an excellent resource,
especially in situations where metamorphosis is a problem; where there
is movement or when a constant light source cannot be maintained.
I develop understanding through sketches, which are just an arrangement
of lines on a small thumbnail scale to work out a composition. Sometimes,
I do a little more than that, like a linear or value study. I've used
the process of blind contour frequently in a relatively slow, methodical
technique which not only aids in understanding the form, but also
forces the recognition of aspects that might otherwise be missed.
That said, however, I'm a firm believer in direct painting as opposed
to doing a lot of preliminary work which feels too complete, soaking
up all my creative efforts - efforts which really should be evident
in the final painting. A painting has to involve the initial creative
process.
When you begin, do you have a clear idea of what
your image will look like?
No. I can visualize what it might
look like when I start, but because its developed on the paper as
I go along, I make a lot of changes. I flow with those changes, making
corrections as I need to, adding or subtracting. If I need light,
I'll add light; if I need dark, I'll add dark areas. The emphasis
is not on the way the subject looks itself, but on the feeling I get
from the subject, so if I'm not getting the feeling, then this is
where changes are made. Feeling is important. I'm not just painting
a representation of what I'm looking at, but I'm painting the way
I feel about it.
Do you ever get stuck with certain areas?
All the time. Sometimes, I'll throw
away the whole painting if I can't resolve it, or I'll put it away
for awhile. There are very few paintings that go from beginning to
end without problems. When things do fall into place, I'm always proud
of those. There are so few, I can probably count them on the fingers
of two hands. Most of the time it's just hard work and making changes.
But, I love it when the spontaneous painting happens, because when
it does, you look at it and say to yourself, When did I do that? I
don't remember doing that. Because, you're in another world completely.
In an altered state. You're painting, but you don't realize what you're
doing. I wish that would happen more often!
Don't we all! What's one of the most important things
you tell your students?
It's different teaching college and
teaching workshops. Because a lot of the students in the college situation
don't know what they're doing, they need to have special art direction
and help in terms of technique. The more advanced students have a
direction and know something about paint, but if they don't know the
techniques to start with, they're lost. They need a basis for understanding
design and how to put a painting together, for understanding composition
and color. I object to a lot of the recent university level education
that I've seen because students aren't being given the basics. You
have to know what you're doing before you can do it; you have to learn
technique; and eventually after the technique and the ideas of design
and composition are understood, then you're able to do what you want.
And you don't even think about it, you just paint, just do it. So
knowing the basics comes first.
Another thing I try to get across
to all the students at the university level and in my workshops is
that everyone is going to paint differently. Everyone has their own
signature, their own way of writing, and everybody has their own way
of holding the brush, putting down the paint, with their own emphasis
and development of the painting, i.e. their own way of putting it
together. If you have an artist that you like a lot, no matter how
hard you try, you're not going to be able to paint like that artist.
You can't paint like anyone else.
For that reason, I try to make demonstrations
as brief as possible. In my art education background I was taught
that you don't demonstrate the whole painting. Another instructor
I had in a graduate program did complete paintings in front of the
students and there wasn't one student in that class who painted any
differently than the teacher. That made an impression on me, so rather
than doing a whole painting and saying this is me, look at what I'm
doing with this beautiful painting, what I try to do is demonstrate
the technique, a way of holding the brush, a way of beginning, a way
of breaking up the space, or ways you can use bright color and overlapping
washes. I show students certain techniques, and then turn them loose.
If I give my students the same problem,
every one of their paintings comes out different. Some of the people
are beginners and some are experienced painters, but they do their
own thing, which is what I think is important.
Recently Ann participated in a group show at the
Chico Art Center, a show that had the largest attendance ever for the
Center. Called "Bag Ladies," the exhibition consisted of work
from eleven Chico women artists. All of the works were created and woven
around specific proverbs and sayings. I assumed the group of women called
themselves the Bag Ladies because when they painted together, they brought
their own bag lunches! But, oh, how wrong I was! Intrigued by the name
for its many connotations and associations, I asked Ann about how the
Bag Ladies got started and where the name came from:
We are a group
of women artists from or near the Chico area who used to get together
every Friday during the '80's at the Chico Art Center to paint. Sometimes
we had models or we set up a still life. We just painted together.
In
the mean time, my parents had moved to Paradise, and Mom and I would
occasionally paint together. Before she moved, she had had cataracts
removed. This was before the implant procedure came into being, so
her vision was affected terribly by light and she couldn't go outside
to paint. I tried to find things to take up to her that she could
paint while remaining indoors. A friend gave me a bunch of old corn
that still had its dried husks attached and that was the first thing
we shared together. I painted it, and then took the box of corn up
to Mother, and she painted it. Then there was a wasp's nest that a
friend gave Mother. She hung it up, painted it, and asked if I would
like to paint it. So I did, and we got together to compare paintings
again.
I mentioned this to the ladies at
the art center and we decided that we would come up with a project
- we would each find an object, do a painting of it, then put it in
a paper sack or bag and pass the bag to someone else. None of us saw
what anyone else was doing until we finished. At that time there were
seven of us. Seven bags and seven people meant there would be 49 paintings
we were supposed to do! Not all of us finished, of course, but finally
we got together to look at everything, had a glass of champagne, and
talked about the paintings. It was such fun to see how different people
reacted towards the same subjects.
The second time we put different objects
in the sacks and passed the bags around, we decided to have a show.
The show was held at the Vagabond Rose in Chico in 1997. It was a
very successful show.
In this recent Bag Ladies show, Ann not only had
several works from her current series of Canyon paintings, but she also
had a three dimensional rock installation which consisted of almost
perfectly spherical yet naturally formed rocks laid out from the largest
to smallest in two rows, with minute visible changes from one rock to
another. But, when all together in a line, a distinct difference in
size from first to last was evident. Inherent in the roundness of the
rocks was nature's sense of perfection, pattern and design; the natural
order of things. Ann says when she looks for a cohesive thread in her
own work over the years, she sees that there is a "consistency…
, not in the intent or the visual images, nor in the technical presentation
itself, but in a basic sense of order, or, if you prefer, organic unity
or design." She knows this order and design when she sees it in
nature, and deftly creates it in her art work, whether in painting or
in collecting rocks!
Is the rock installation something new for you?
Yes, it took two and a half years
to get that together and there's more of it over there on my kitchen
counter and two sets in the studio. It was a fun thing to do. I'd
go out with the dogs to the Channel and other places, like the creeks
around Chico, and every time I saw a rock I liked, I'd pick it up.
I found that the rocks I was picking up were as round as I could get.
Then I started organizing them and reorganizing them. I had two sets
going at once. I'd take one rock and place it in the other line if
it fit better.
When you were collecting and organizing rocks, did you
think of it an art project?
No. I've done very little three dimensional
work, but really enjoyed it. It was just fun, and I loved the feel
of them. Then, with this last Bag Ladies' show, where we worked around
the sayings and proverbs, I thought, well, I can use the rocks for
one of the proverbs in the show. After the show was over, I moved
the rock piece to the Chico Museum where a high school teacher at
Pleasant Valley High had put together a show to help her students
learn how to set up an exhibition and judge shows. The title of the
show was "Chico Scene." Everybody submitted things that
had to do with Chico, so I entered the rocks; it's all Chico. I didn't
know if it would be accepted.
How is creating that three dimensional piece different
from creating a painting? Or is it?
Not much. It's a matter of selectivity,
you know. Trying to put things together in the order in which you
want them. It isn't that different, except the rocks were more easily
changed. I could just move them. With a painting, you can't do that.
And, in that sense, it is a living, evolving piece,
it could still change, every time you find a new rock.
Yes. It can.
Another continually evolving
and productive project for Ann, like her own painting, is the scholarship
fund she set up in the name of her mother, Frances Trucksess. Our conversation
began with Ann telling me about an exhibition she and Marlys Williams,
then curator of the BMU Upstairs Gallery on campus, pulled together
of Ann's many paintings that had been loaned out to various departments
on the Chico campus over the thirty-one years of her teaching career.
It was a difficult endeavor because in the course of their search, they
discovered that many of the departments had moved to new buildings and
taken the paintings with them. In order to find them, they first had
to find the new locations of all the departments, and then they had
to convince people to let go of the paintings for the show. Many people,
who didn't want to give up their treasured paintings, wound up purchasing
them. In their search, Ann and Marlys collected over 72 pieces which
were finally hung in the Upstairs Gallery.
The proceeds from the sale of the
works went towards the Fran Trucksess Watermedia Scholarship at CSU
Chico.
Ann T. Pierce, now retired from Chico
State, currently resides in Chico, California, and is actively involved
in teaching watercolor workshops out of her own studio and in various
locations around California and Nevada, as well as continuing with her
own painting projects.