Karen Pierce / Metalsmith PO Box 3241 Evergreen, CO 80437-3241 Phone: 303 674-2104 E-mail: karen@karenpierce.com Since many e-mail messages are removed by spam filters, please give me a call if you do not receive a reply to an e-mail you send to me. Alternate e-mail address should your e-mail to me bounce back: karenlynnpierce@hotmail.com
GUIDE TO MY VERY LONG WEBPAGE First Half: My metalwork -About my metalwork -Pieces Available (please buy!) -Archives (past metalwork) Second Half: Archaeology and Indian Church Village (Lamanai), Belize -Lamanai Maya Site and beyond -Belize educational Scholarship Program -Indian Church Village Artisans -Indian Church Village Library About the photos -Click on any photo to enlarge and read a description.
NEW IN 2012: I will be exhibiting and selling my metalwork at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington DC, April 18-22. For more details see: http://www.smithsoniancraftshow.org.
Maya Archaeology, my personal passion. I am still studying archaeology at the University of Colorado. I'm interested in ancient metalworking techniques, as well as Maya site planning and architecture. Last summer I spend some time working on archaeology at the site of Ka'Kabish near Lamanai in Belize, learning about pottery identification, which is key to dating buildings and other things. Belize Educational Scholarship Program: I have coordinated an educational scholarship program in Belize for the past 11 years, which provides financial support to help families send their children from remote rural villages to high school. You can get a tax-deduction for your donation and help a child get an education too! Further information can be found here.
Karen climbing Lamanai High Temple
Karen Pierce and Sonia Gonzalez-Arevalo, the ICV librarian
Village High School Students and Parents
ABOUT MY METALWORK…
I make all of my pieces by myself, by hand, using sheets of metal, hammers, steel forming stakes, a jeweler’s saw, a torch, files, sanding/polishing equipment, and a variety of other tools.To finish the pieces I use various patina techniques and I often apply gold-leaf or use silver or gold electroplating for contrast with the dark-patinated copper surfaces.
My metalwork is focused on vessels, which are generally semi-functional decorative vessels that reflect my architecturally influenced appreciation for clean lines and spare design.Some vessels have been influenced by my appreciation of our natural environment in combination with my interest in the custom of ritual offerings and ancient offering vessels, as well as my involvement with archaeology at the Maya site of Lamanai in Belize.
PIECES AVAILABLE MOUSE OVER IMAGE FOR DESCRIPTION OR CLICK TO ENLARGE. ALL DIMENSIONS SHOWN ARE IN INCHES.
TO PURCHASE OR INQUIRE ABOUT A PIECE, PLEASE CONTACT ME BY TELEPHONE OR E-MAIL.
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ARCHIVES MOUSE OVER IMAGE FOR DESCRIPTION OR CLICK TO ENLARGE. ALL DIMENSIONS SHOWN ARE IN INCHES.
See how Maya archaeology has influenced my artwork. CLICK HERE FOR A DOCUMENT WITH PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF MY "LAMANAI SERIES" ONE-OF-A-KIND VESSELS: MS Word Format or PDF
PHOTOS OF PEOPLE FROM INDIAN CHURCH VILLAGE AND SOME GREAT ARCHAEOLOGY SITES:
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A DAY IN MY LIFE....
MY COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE PROJECTS IN BELIZE
The photos and text below provide glimpses of some of my friends in Indian Church Village and the artisan training & educational scholarship projects I have been involved with there during the past 10 years.
I first visited Indian Church Village and Lamanai with my husband in January 1998.There we met archaeologist Laura Howard, who was then working at Lamanai Outpost Lodge.Having an art and design background (my first career was commercial interior design/ architecture) and an interest in Maya culture, I mentioned to Laura my desire to attend an archaeology field school.A few months later I was back in Belize as a field school student at Lamanai studying Maya architecture.Here I met many other archaeologists, including Scott Simmons, who was there to set up a project to investigate Maya copper production at the Lamanai site.I have been a metalsmith working in copper since 1990, and I was fascinated by Scott’s project, so I volunteered to help him with his research the following summer.In the meantime, I went back to graduate school full time as a student of anthropology/archaeology.I first started to get to know people in the adjacent village of Indian Church while assisting Scott in his research in 1999.We worked in the field daily for 6 weeks and had some men from the village helping us cut trails in the bush.I got to know these men and many others from the village as well.They earned a very small amount of money for their hard labor and I was appalled by this.It was the standard pay-rate for this type of work in Belize, but it seemed unjust to me. The people of Indian Church Village had so little and I wanted to do something to help them. I have been working with the people from Indian Church Village ever since. Karen Pierce
Click on photos below for an enlarged image.
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THE MAYA SITE OF LAMANAI, BELIZE
The Maya site of Lamanai was formerly called "Indian Church", named after the ruins of two 16th Century Conquest-period Spanish churches built on the site. When documents were found in Seville, Spain referring to the Maya name for this city as Laman' ayin, the site name was changed to Lamanai. Lamanai is located approximately 30 miles inland from Belize's east coast on the Caribbean Sea and the Maya would travel between the sea and Lamanai via boat on the New River (known as the Dzuluinicob in prehistoric times) which meets the sea near the modern day town of Corozal (about 80 miles).People lived in the city of Lamanai for over 3000 years—from around 1500BC to AD1500!
During the years 1998-2002 I participated in archaeology at Lamanai.The three main projects I worked on were the architectural recording and mapping of the structures of an elite residential complex called "Ottawa"; the investigation of the production of copper artifacts at Lamanai and the search for a "metal production workshop"; and the reproduction of jade artifacts and of large limestone monuments, called stela and altars.
THE ARTISANS TRAINING PROJECT
The Indian Church Village Craft Training Project, an artisans training project for the village initiated by Karen Pierce, was started in the summer of 2000 by a group of artists, architects and archaeologists working at Lamanai and it continues to this day. For many years I served as the volunteer director of this project. Several small grants helped the training project gain momentum and funded a building for the artisans. The project has carried on largely through the help of volunteers and donations--over 20 artists from the USA, Canada and England have gone to Indian Church Village to teach!We have been teaching crafts and helping the people of Indian Church Village set up their own local craft workshop/cottage industry to produce quality crafts to provide an economic base for many of the economically disadvantaged people who live in this village.There are now studios set up for jewelry-making, needleworking, stonecarving and ceramics.The artisans' designs reference Maya art and designs of local flora and fauna.The ICVA have their own gift shop at the Lamanai site and they are marketing their crafts elsewhere in Belize.Volunteers and donations are always welcomed.
THE HIGH SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
I coordinate a scholarship program, which officially started with the 2003/04 school year, to help children from the village attend high school.Free public school in Belize only goes through primary school (Standard 6 British system--about equal to USA grade 6).If one chooses to continue their education beyond this, they must pay to attend a 4-year high school program at a cost of approximately $2,000.00US per year for school fees, books, uniforms, transportation and room & board (they must live away from home, as there are no high schools near the village).Most of these children's families can not afford to pay tuition, let alone the additional expenses involved with their child's education. The high-school scholarship program was started after we got to know many of the village children and learned of their desire to attend high school and learned of the prohibitive costs associated with their continuing education.
THE INDIAN CHURCH VILLAGE LIBRARY
Coordinated by Laura Howard, the libraryopened in March 2005, with books donated from several different organizations. Cash donations have enabled the hiring of a librarian from the village and the Belize National Library provides additional assistance. In the summer of 2006 Laura raised funds and coordinated the construction of an addition to the library building and she continues to coordinate library programs and book donations.
