Mirella Monti Belshé
Alexandria, Virginia

Buonarroti in Polynesia
cast tapa cloth, plexiglass
11.5 x 17.5 x 12 cm
2004

____Selected exhibitions

  • 12 Altered Books, solo exhibition, 1600 Tysons Blvd., Tysons Corner, Virginia, 2005
  • Arte al Feminile, Centro Arte e Cultura Contemporanea, Prato, Italy, 2003
  • Solo exhibition, Reagan National Airport, Arlington County, Virginia, 2002, 2003
  • Homage to Marino Marini, Museo Marino Marini, Pistoia, Italy, 2001
  • Monti, solo exhibition, Galleria Modigliani, Grosseto, Italy, 2001
  • Scherzi and Fughe, solo exhibition, Gallery 10 Ltd., Washington, D.C., 1999
  • Solo exhibition, Lenoir Ryne College, Hickory, North Carolina, 1998
  • Syncretism and Reconciliations, solo exhibition, Gallery 10 Ltd., 1997

Born in 1928 in Toscana, Italy, Mirella Monti Belshé received a BA, 1964, MA, 1966, and a MFA, 1968, from the University of Hawai‘i. A full-time sculptor, with her primary studio in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia, she also works in Florence and Pietrasanta, Italy. Her work is in private collections and public spaces throughout the United States and abroad including the American Embassies in Canada and Zimbabwe. In 1999 she completed a 95-foot long mural for the Headquarters Defense Logistics Agency, Fort Belvior, Virginia.
The intimacy of nature, and an icon of art history, seduced me: golden fibers spun by silkworms, feeding on leaves of mulberry trees, bark stripped and beaten into tapa; fibrous tapa's tendency to roll, perfect medium for David's foot, and its need to be bound to fit in a shoebox.