Mississippi Mud
  • 2d art

Past contributor Mirzam Perez has favored us with her recent mixed media piece, “Mississippi Mud,” which combines earthy tones with a texture that calls out for contact.

decorative header image from Volume X Issue 1 · Spring 2024

My visual practice is positioned at the junction of soft sculpture, painting, and installation. In my art I paint and sculpt textile landscapes in non-traditional ways. I create boldly colored 2d and 3D topographies inspired in land formations and bodies of water from my immediate and imaginary environment. I render mixed media paintings with sculptural characteristics and build sculptures with painterly qualities. In my soft sculptures and installations, I challenge what is normally included in these works. I integrate nontraditional materials such as vintage fabrics that I have dyed/altered, plastic waste products, trinkets, and personal objects., This apparently unconventional artistic process is not random; it is intimately connected to the topics I explore. I straddle multiple types of media and genres, radically defying to be classified exclusively as one or another type of art. I approach art making as an activity residing within the borderlands of various disciplines. I choose the materials and mediums that best fit the idea to express as closely as possibly what I have conceived in my mind. My goal is to entice viewers’ desire to reach out and touch my work.

Mississippi Mud
30 in x 30 in x 13/4 in
Stretched fabric, Acrylic paint and mediums
2023Rootstalk leaf-bug icon marking the end of the article's text.

Artwork
About Artist Mirzam Pérez

Mirzam Pérez (She) is a Honduran-born, self-taught visual artist based in Grinnell, Iowa. She describes her art as a constant search for belonging and an active dialog with environmental issues, identity, immigration, and “fitting in.” In her mixed media paintings, she uses bright fabrics as her working surface and contrasts solid-colored figures in the foreground with multicolored, translucent tints. Her textile sculptural forms combine her love of color and texture. She uses found fabric as well as fabric she has dyed herself to create pieces that focus on land, water and our stewardship of natural resources. Mirzam Pérez’ art seeks to educate, promote reflection, and ultimately, move us towards the protection of human and natural resources. Her work emphasizes our interconnection, the layers of history and cultural practices that bind us, and that constantly remind us of the urgent need to conserve life and land in any region of the world.

Instagram: @mirzamperezart