Local artist's portraits now on display

By ROB HERBST
The Catholic Week
Montgomery artist and Holy Spirit Parish parishioner Sue Pieri’s latest works are now displayed in the parish church thanks to an overheard conversation.
Pieri said she was speaking last summer in the vestibule following Mass about her work as an artist  when newly-arrived pastor Fr. Sherwin Monteron took notice.
“He swings around and says ‘what do you paint?’ Pieri recalled. 
Pieri informed him that she paints portraits and that led to a new project. Pieri’s oil portrait paintings of Fr. Monteron, Pope Francis and Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi, along with her previous painted portraits of former Holy Spirit pastors, were recently displayed in a gallery adjacent to the church sanctuary.
“That was really awesome because I didn’t seek him out, he sought me,” she said. "It felt like a big privilege."
Pieri, a commissioned artist for many public and private projects, has long lent her talents and time to enhancing beauty at the parish. She was a member of the building committee, which oversaw many parts of the church construction before it was dedicated in 2001. She designed the church’s stained glass windows.
From stained-glass windows to restored statues, her work can be seen throughout the Montgomery area. But it’s portraits which she especially loves.
“Everybody says (the portraits) are looking at them,” she said. “I like the relationships with people.”
Pieri creates her work based on photographs and she guessed a typical portrait takes her 40 hours of labor. A big portion of the time is sketching the portrait on her whiteboard. 
Math skills are critical as she calculates correct proportions to have uniformed head sizes. She also measures everything on her board.
If something’s not right, “Yeah I have to fix it because it’s going to bother me. Somebody else might not notice it, but every time I look at it, I’ll see it,” she said.
Pieri’s portraits for Holy Spirit Parish began years ago. As part of a parish fundraiser, she donated a gift card toward a portrait. The person that won the gift card wanted a portrait of pastor Fr. Charles Troncale.
As Pieri recalled, “(he said) I’m not having my portrait up there if the other priests aren’t up there. Those went up and it just kept going. That was pretty awesome.”
Pieri said she doesn’t usually see her art’s impact on others, but knows it can have an effect. Pieri once restored outside statues at Our Lady Queen of Mercy Parish in Montgomery. The work was intensive as she stood on a ladder during a windy day and she said she rubbed her knuckles to the bone because of the scrubbing involved.
“We get the whole thing done and it was beautiful, then somebody took a picture of random people stopped along (the road) and they got out of their cars and were kneeling and praying,” she said. 
“That made me more determined because it does affect people.”