Abbey Messmer, a Dallas, Texas native, earned her B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas in 2001. Currently based in Phoenix, Arizona, she balances her work as a fine artist with her role as Programming Director at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, where she curates cultural programs and main stage events that promote diversity and community engagement.
Messmer’s artwork uses water as a metaphor for the constant state of change in life. Her paintings, inspired by photographs taken underwater in swimming pools, explore alternate perspectives shaped by liquid distortion. Through her process, she creates vivid portrayals of disrupted landscapes, sweeping skies, curved horizons, and altered human forms, often incorporating symbolic elements like ladders and umbrellas. These pieces reflect the interplay of personal experience, inherited traits, and external forces that shape our individual paths.
For over a decade, Messmer co-managed The Lodge, a pivotal artist-run workspace and gallery housed in a historic building on Grand Avenue in downtown Phoenix, which anchored the district’s arts scene until its closure in 2021. She continues her creative practice at her new studio in the La Melgosa Building on Grand Avenue.
Messmer’s exhibition history includes shows at the Phoenix Art Museum, Mesa Arts Center, Herberger Theater Center, Shemer Art Center, Estrella Mountain Community College, and Monorchid. Notably, she participated in Art360 with the Arizona Science Center, where her work was animated and projected onto the Dorrance Planetarium dome. In 2023, she presented her first solo museum exhibition at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum.
Her contributions to the Phoenix arts community extend to her membership with the Eye Lounge collective from 2012 to 2015 and receiving the Contemporary Forum Arts Grant in 2015. Throughout her career, Messmer has remained dedicated to creating art that invites reflection on the forces shaping our existence while enriching her community through the performing arts.
