Lisa Simms Wearable Sculpture

BIOGRAPHY

I was born in Texas in the beginning of the 1960's. By the time I was 3 years old, my mother could tell by the graffiti on the living room walls that I wanted to be an artist.

In 1978 my parents sent me on a tour of Europe and promptly upon my return, I ran away from home. I hitched a ride on the back of a Harley, and found my way to the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. I worked at a lot of meaningless, semi-horrible jobs (bartending, chicken processing, ditch digging...), and eventually earned a B.A. in photography and sculpture. During my university years for some unknown reason (unless you believe the astrologer who said I had been a shaman, ALWAYS, and I had this need for rituals....) I started making masks in earnest for local galleries, theatre and opera productions. The mask making was enough of an obsession that I enrolled in a UCLA summer abroad workshop in Arlesega, Italy at the Centro Maschere studying mask-making and mask design for Comedia del Arte theatre. That summer in Italy, in a school with students from all over the world I learned two things: 1 ) that I was most definitely an artist, and 2) it takes guts to get what you want in life – even more so if your path is not a normal one.

After returning from Italy, I spent several years making masks, headdresses, and hats by the dozens and schlepping them down to New Orleans to sell them for Mardi Gras. Yes, I am the one you saw – clothed in a ridiculous giant telephone hat and wearing several tutus – in Southern Living magazine and a NBC news special on Mardi Gras. And in spite of all that fun, (after all I got to make wearable art pieces for people who were later going to vomit on them!) when the mask work no longer presented a challenge I knew it was time to move on with my work as well as my life. The U.S. was not for me.

In 1994 I came to San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, to push myself to either be a real artist, or get a real job. I studied sculpture, jewelry-making, lost wax casting, papier mache, puppetry, ceramics and drawing. I stayed (and thank god couldn't get a real job) and opened my own gallery in 1995 and started selling my one-of-a-kind sculptural jewelry. For purposes of shear survival, I started teaching papier mache for mask-making and sculpture and discovered I was really good at it. The teaching taught me about me. I started volunteer teaching special needs kids and discovered my passion to be a humanitarian. In 2004 and 2005 I had the honor to be invited to teach art workshops to landmine victim children in Quang Tri Province in central Vietnam for International Children's Day. My work and travels in Vietnam absolutely changed my life, and pushed my work to a new depth.

My work has shown in the U.S., Italy, Vietnam, and Mexico in art galleries, art schools, landmine awareness centers, and even in cantinas. ( I am not after all, too proud to hang my "Giant Cockroach, Vomiting A Man"above some drunk's head.) In San Miguel, I was recently awarded 1st prize for best jewelry design in a juried competition held in Bellas Artes, as well as 1st prize at the San Miguel International Chili Cook-off for my disgusting and irreverent papier mache "rat's ass" hat.

My work is included in the collections of the Mellon Family, John Falcon, Maria Conchita Alonso, Joanne Christopher, Marilyn Nicols and a tiny kindergarten at the Friendship Village in DongHa Town, Vietnam.

And no, to this day I still haven't had to get a real job.