Danny Pierce

Daniel P. Pierce (September 10, 1920 – March 6, 2014) was a painter, printmaker and sculptor. He founded the University of Alaska’s art department in 1960 and retired as professor emeritus of art from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In 2012, he received an honorary doctorate of arts from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in recognition of his accomplishments as an artist and educator and for his contributions to the practice of art in Alaska.

Early life and education Pierce was raised on a cattle ranch in the Mojave desert and took to drawing animals at an early age. His formal training began in Los Angeles at the Art Center School, now the Art Center College of Design, and Chouinard Art Institute, which later merged with California Institute of Arts. WW II interrupted his education when he was drafted into the army in 1942. In 1947, he resumed his studies in New York under the auspices of the GI Bill. He studied with William Gropper and Raphael Soyer at the American Artists School and attended the also no-longer-extant Brooklyn Museum School, where he worked closely with Gabor Peterdi, Max Beckmann and Ben Shahn.

Commercial and Academic Career In the late 40s, Pierce did freelance illustration for the popular and widely distributed pulp magazine Adventure immediately following the retirement of famed wildlife illustrator Lynn Bogue Hunt. He taught advanced printmaking at Hunter College, where he also took over the beginning drawing class from Clyfford Still in 1951.

In 1953, he moved to Kent, WA and began teaching at various Seattle institutions, including Broadway High School, Seattle University, Cornish College of the Arts, Burnley School of Professional Art (now the Seattle Art Institute), and the Seattle Art Museum. In 1959, he became a Carnegie fellow at the University of Alaska. While in Alaska, he served as an advisor to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The landmark report that he and economist George Rogers wrote in 1962 for the BIA, after the two of them traveled together through Canada, recommended self-determination and that non-commercial, academic institutions in Alaska host the production of Alaska Native art.

Danny's work was by then receiving broader national and international recognition. In 1958 he was praised as "outstanding" by the Washington Post.

Artist's Publications Pierce’s Red Door Studio has published 29 limited edition woodcut-illustrated books. The artist composed each of the narratives and set the type, in addition to carving and printing all blocks. Among these books are several children’s stories, a thorough and meticulously researched compendium of American Revolutionary War uniforms, and various ethnographic and zoological volumes. One documents a whale hunt at Point Hope, Alaska. Others are concerned with rural labor, farming, fishing and animal-related subjects. The library at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee houses an archive of Pierce's artist books and maintains an online exhibition of them.

Museum Collections

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris City Art Collection, Kent, Washington Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, Washington Henry Art Gallery Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum of the North National Museum of Sweden Seattle Art Museum Smithsonian Institution Victoria and Albert Museum