Baker Artist Portfolios

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­In everything she undertakes, Baltimore based artist Gina Pierleoni brings individual elements together to create a more cohesive and loving whole. Pierleoni uses portraiture to spark conversations about empathy and our common humanity.  Her mixed media images of real people push past label and judgements in an attempt to ‘de-separate’ us. These portraits on wooden panels (more than 300 to date) depict real people and are a record of time spent together.  When installed, they are gathered together as a community or congregation. 

The Family Remains, a new series, features her family’s cooking pot lids as stand-ins for cultural transmission and wisdom from 'the old country'.  

Old paintings are reworked into larger configurations for the series Human Icons that record a transformative moment in the people they depict.

Sewn Figures are constructed from discarded fabrics, found objects and future landfill items.  Cast-offs are lovingly transformed into hand-sewn figures with beaded and painted faces.  Pierleoni’s series of Painting Rag Shirts are what they are: 4 decades worth of saved T-shirt scraps used in the studio, sewn together to create shirts that bears the history of her paintings.  

Arrows, torn from old paintings and to-do lists, are imbued with intentional prayers. These prayers sit together in her maternal immigrant grandmother's sauce pot, the place Pierleoni learned to cook.  Even in the series, Forgetting Memory, her mother’s brain loss inspires ways to piece together new stories with humor and compassion.  Studio detritus also finds a way back into her work, or stands alone as Remnants.

In 2026, Pierleoni received a Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant. In 2025, she was awarded a Community Creator’s Fund Grant from The Peale Museum. The Pollock Krasner Foundation sponsored Pierleoni's 2025 residency at Byrdcliffe AIR.  In 2024, Pierleoni was awarded a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowship.  Individual Artist Awards include grants from: Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; the Gottlieb Foundation (emergency grant); three from Maryland State Arts Council.  In 2020, she was acknowledged with an 'Exceptional Achievement as an Adjunct Faculty Member in Arts & Humanities from Harford Community College.  Pierleoni was recognized as a ‘Hero in the MICA Community’ in 2011. She earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.  

Solo exhibition venues include: Stevenson University, Stevenson, MD; Creative Alliance, Baltimore; Uferwerk, Werder, Germany; CCBC, Baltimore; Mooney Gallery, New Rochelle, NY; Craig Flinner Gallery, Baltimore; Gallery 10, Washington, DC; School 33 Art Center, Baltimore.  Group exhibition venues include: Towson University, MD; The Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, Baltimore; Courthouse Galleries, Portsmouth, VA; Notre Dame University of Maryland, Baltimore; Fortezza da Basso, Florence, Italy; Angel Orensanz Foundation, NY/NY; Betsy Underground Gallery, Miami Beach, FL; WPA/Corcoran, Washington, DC; Maryland Art Place, Baltimore; Maxwell Fine Arts, Peekskill, NY.  

Gina Pierleoni is an Adjunct Professor at Stevenson University.