Regina Fierro

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Regina Fierro (born May 7, 1943) is a painter, sculptor, dancer and art educator living in Hawaii. Her talent for art was discovered at an early age; by the age of 14 she was teaching art classes. Her main areas of art are painting, sculpture, cold metal casting, mold making and casting in plaster, bronze, terrazzo, marble carving, drawing, ceramics, stained glass, music and dance. She is a member and past vice president of the National Society for Arts and Letters and the recipient of the Teachers Award from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts.

At the age of 16 Ms. Fierro was discovered by a master painter and sculptor and tutored for the next 10 years, after which she began to work with Eli Marozzi for 20 years and studied with other masters on the East Coast. It was at this period that she created six of the seven terrazo pieces, weighing one to two tons each, entitled "As You Like It" for the Honolulu Stadium Park in Moiliili for the State Foundation. Her other works may be seen in such public venues as The Holy Nativity Church in Aina Haina where her "Suffer Little Children To Come Unto Me" bas relief is to be found, or the Punahou Cliffs condominum courtyard, where her 9 foot high bronze bas relief, "Madame Pele" is on display. The relief "Ke Aka Mauna Kea" was on loan to the Pauahi Tower, Bishop Square, in the heart of downtown Honolulu, while her life size bronze bust of Queen Kapiolani graces the Queen Kapiolani Medical Center. Ms. Fierro taught sculpture and painting in group and private classes for many years. Her students have gone on to such schools and the Rhode Island Institute (Darthmath).

She attributes her ability to express motion and vitality in the static medium of bronze, marble, terrazo and oil painting to her extensive dance background. Having studied for 10 years with Betty Jones and Fritz Luden (of the original Jose Lemon Company) and Josephine Taylor (of the original Martha Gram Company), Regina believes that the discipline and grace of the dance, as well as the experience of the forms and shapes of human anatomy help her delineate and articulate balance and tension in her work. Her sculpting career came to an abrupt halt 10 years ago due to an automobile accident where she suffered a massive brain injury and a heart attack. Unable to sculpt, she began to study painting and is now nearing the first public exposition of her painted works.

In a fashion reminiscient of Hieronymus Bosch, Fierro's paintings offer the spectator a visual bonanza with the deeper meaning "hidden in plain sight". At the surface, the colors, the detail and the subject matter grab attention even in this visually saturated advertising age. It is the deeper meaning, however, that sets the work apart from the visually rich but message-free creations of the milieu. A casual glance at the "Mirror Self" painting offers us an initial view of two angels on a planetary background, executed with respectable mastery. Once past the visual candy stage, the deeper message of the painting slowly emerges: do opposites really exist? Could good and bad, light and dark, the angel on the left and the one on the right be simply two different faces of the same whole? Does the painting seem erotic or spiritual? Are these two things opposite? Can they be? "Mirror Self" offers us a Rorschall test in beautiful colors and detail. It's both a painting and a mirror to one's innermost self - like all good art.

External link: Official web site [1]