SUSAN BERGER has 2 works included in The Ocean State Review, published at the University of Rhode Island, Vol.7, No.1

Susan Berger
“55-70 Bethune Street in Sampler Format and Using Google Earth Fiber/Mixed Media – 2010
36”(w) x 40”(h)”

55-70 Bethune Street. The building where I lived and worked is called “Westbeth Artist Housing”. Across the street from Westbeth was Superior Ink Printing Company and was designed by a famous industrial architect named A.G Zimmerman. Both buildings are side by side and take on factory-like images and done in crude stitches. Another panel you have a street divided by the two buildings land/street is on one side and the Hudson River on the other side. Google Earth images of the two buildings are used. Many times Google Earth images are never removed from the Internet even though Superior Ink no longer exists.

The work is about the city, which needs old buildings because it tells us about the past, and that it should not be lost but revived; and artists tend to co-exist with the past by preserving it but not destroying it.

Susan Berger “Bon Voyage, A La Family” (A Drawing)
Weave Stitching – Fiber – Mixed Media
2013 – 40”(w) x 36”(h)

Bon Voyage is about cruises taken with my family or it can be with any family during the 1950s. You look in the scrapbook and see photos taken way back when. We remember the good times and hold onto those memories even though the family might no longer exist. Memories are frozen in time, and sometimes can be falsely perceived as we look back. I combine copies of the original photographs with my renditions done in weave stitching and combine fabric in a quilt-like pattern, which gives its own patina.

The Ocean State Review is a yearly print journal. For more info: oceanstatereview.org