Misty Long is a multi-media artist residing in Peoria, Illinois. She is the Studio Manager at J Draper Glass LLC, where she assists, instructs classes, performs demonstrations, and narrates. Misty received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Glass from Illinois State University in 2013. She discovered glass as an elective during her studies and since then glass has been a major material in the creation of her works.
Misty creates work that is joyful. She does that by incorporating games, imagination, and other things that are often considered childish into her work. Essentially she is trying to create moments of joy that can add up to create an overall feeling of happiness. She uses humor, imagination, curiosity, and whimsy as vehicles of joyful expression. As you get older, you are surrounded with more responsibilities that can take away from the things that used to give you joy, such as playing, games, drawing, watching cartoons, humor, being imaginative, etc. Keeping the things that give you joy in your life, whatever those things may be for you, is important and it is a major component of her work.
Another fundamental element to Misty’s art is the desire to create work that pushes against the traditional ideas of fine art. To accomplish this, she uses vending machines, faux kiosks, and unconventional building materials as environments and components for her work. She believes that art does not have to be a serious subject matter, political, or ultra conceptual in order for it to be taken seriously.
Misty combines these two concepts of joy and the untraditional to create work that is imaginative, humorous, and whimsical.
