black & white: lack of color inspires artist
By Casey Gillis on Sep. 09, 2009
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The inspiration for Barbara Bernstein’s latest installation began with a stark-white bureau at a Salvation Army store.
“I said to my husband, ‘That’s my next drawing. I’m going to do a whole room,’” she says. “I just saw it.”
The result — a stand-alone room in which everything is covered, inside and out, with her black and white drawings of plants — is on display at Riverviews Artpace in an exhibition called “Patterns of Love and Beauty.”
The title comes from one of the last conversations she had with her late father, when he told her, “It’s all patterns, and the patterns are love and beauty.’”
“I thought, ‘OK, Dad, here you go,’” she says of the show, which is dedicated to him. “We are always surrounded by love and beauty no matter where we look.”
Bernstein, an artist-in-residence at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) in Amherst, has tailored the installation to Riverviews’ Craddock-Terry Gallery by also covering all of its windows with the same pattern.
“When I saw the windows, I just thought, ‘OK, everything is going to be covered,’” says Bernstein, who had to overcome her fear of heights to reach the top of the windows.
The final product has turned the entire gallery into a piece of art. At different points during the day, the walls and columns are lit up with reflections of the pattern coming through the windows.
“It’s such a great light show,” Bernstein says.
The stand-alone room sits in the middle of the gallery and is something of an optical illusion, with everything covered in the same drawings — the walls, the floor and other items, including the original bureau, the ceiling fan, a table and chair, a pair of women’s pumps, a clock and even two mirrors so, she says, “when you look in (it), you have the pattern on you.”
Bernstein drew it all freehand with black ultra-fine Sharpies. (She drew on the windows with black washable markers.)
“The drawing, for me, is very meditative,” she says.
For the walls and floor, she created four original 2-foot by 3-foot drawings, had more than 100 of them printed and attached them to the space almost like wallpaper.
Bernstein says she sees both the windows and the room as a “contemplation of time:” the windows because of how the light and time of day changes their reflections in the gallery, and the stand-alone room because it’s set up to look like someone just left. A book sits open on the table, and a dress is draped over the chair.
“It’s us,” she says, “and what will remain when we leave.”
Erin Stover-Zumwalt, Riverviews’ exhibitions and programs manager, says she loves that Bernstein’s work is so “unapologetically beautiful.”
“At Riverviews, we try to bring in art that’s cutting-edge and challenges people,” Stover-Zumwalt says. “I think this does challenge people, but is beautiful at the same time.”
Drawing has always been in Bernstein’s blood.
“It’s so immediate,” she says. “It’s the direct contact between my mind, my heart and my hand, and then onto the page. Whether I’m using a pencil or a Sharpie, there isn’t an intermediary. It just goes directly onto the surface.”
Bernstein, a New York native, started taking art classes when she was 8 years old and later studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. She also has two masters in art from the University of New Mexico.
Through the years, she’s always stuck with black and white drawings of architecture, nature and whatever else inspired her in the moment.
“I am still learning from it — what black and white can do, the power of black and white, the subtlety of black and white,” Bernstein says.
“I think it also makes us appreciate (color). You leave and look out and see the green in the trees and the red of a car and the blue of someone’s T-shirt, and it makes it that much more impactful … even more intense.”
She and her husband, David Garratt, have lived and shown their work all over the world. Bernstein has taught art at Yale University and completed residencies in Italy, Austria and Israel.
The couple came to VCCA as fellows during the summer of 2007.
“Residencies are the most wonderful and necessary experience for any artist or writer or composer,” she says.
“No artist can ask for a better gift. Uninterrupted time and support is just magical. It’s the equation for making great work.”
They later became VCCA’s artists-in-residence, a job Bernstein describes as being “first responders.”
The couple has to be available 24/7 to help the fellows — 22 artists, composers and writers who come in and out, staying anywhere from five days to two months — with anything they need, be it a light bulb for a fixture or more supplies for their work.
“The combination of people always changes, but it’s always booked,” she says.
“We just make sure that everyone who is there as a fellow is able to do their work in optimum conditions. It’s a very serious responsibility.”
Bernstein also works in the kitchen as needed, and Garratt works with the maintenance crew a couple days a week.
Her Riverviews installation has given Bernstein something of a respite from those daily duties; it’s been a time for her to focus solely on her art and her motivations.
“Paying attention is really important to me,” she says, “and that’s what I try to convey in the work: let’s pay attention to things we might not normally consider.”
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