Statement
My artwork focuses on using cast translucent resin in combination with botanicals and unexpected materials and processes to capture moments in time and initiate evocative investigations of perception and emotion through the manipulated materiality. Central to my work are the elements of surprise, wonder, and overlooked beauty found in everyday elements and nature where I try to transform the commonplace to the sublime and simultaneously instill commentary on the complex underpinnings of the Anthropocene.
Both aesthetically and conceptually, my mixed media work is driven by a fascination with nature's beauty and underlying systems along with its fragility, connectivity, malleability, impermanence, and mutability as reflected in the micro and macro of our lives. In much of my work, I use compositional striations of resin and various materials in a compositional format of the ubiquitous barcode in order to visually express how the paradigms of rampant consumerism and capitalism are undermining the nature of our biosphere, jeopardizing its existence along with our own. I attempt to evoke in my work the delicate edge that humanity's undeniable connection with nature is teetering on and the critical need to preserve that fragile balance and beauty into the future.
Bio
Marcia Stuermer is a mixed-media artist based in San Francisco. Originally from Ohio, Stuermer studied at the Cooper School of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Kansas City Art Institute where she received her BFA in sculpture and drawing. Early in her artistic career she immersed herself in multi-media, performance, and sculptural installation work, while holding numerous teaching residencies with the Ohio Arts Council and the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1988 she received a prestigious fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council after which she relocated to San Francisco, the destination city that had enchanted her on the numerous family cross-country, summer road trips of her youth.
Nature, science, and unconventional artistic creativity has inspired Stuermer from an early age and those elements, seemingly intrinsic to the San Francisco/Bay Area, continue to inform her work today. Employing that symbiotic relationship of forces, Stuermer uses her alchemy to transform her primary medium of translucent resin in combination with other materials into expressive investigations of emotion, thought and memory as she evokes commentary on topical issues. Exhibited in a wide range of galleries and published extensively in art and design publications world- wide, her work is held in private and corporate collections in the Bay Area and throughout the US and is currently in accession review at the Denver Botanic Gardens where she recently completed an artist residency.
In addition to her studio practice, Stuermer is also the founder and creative force behind Stuermer Studios, known for functional, artisanal resin applications for the interior design and architectural industries.