Susan Berger Mixed Media artist

Hillhouse High School’s Song. Fiber mixed media 2020

2021 FAR & WIDE National
Juried by Nicelle Beauchene & Franklin Parrasch
June 4-July 18, 2021

The third annual FAR & WIDE National exhibition, on view in the Main Gallery, is organized around the concept of Art Brut, a French term translating to ‘raw art’, to describe works made outside the academic tradition of art making. The exhibition comprises work by twenty-five artists, selected through a national call and juried by Nicelle Beauchene and Franklin Parrasch, co-founders of Parts & Labor in Beacon, NY. For this exhibition, the jurors sought works that incorporate a unique use of materiality and modes of expression, as well as works outside the conventional dictates of the art world.

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum
Woodstock, New York

Susan Berger
“I began as a painter and sculptor. I later delved into used mixed media working mostly in fiber/yarns. I use a variety of materials and combine different rug hooking, latch hooking and weave stitching into my works. The subject matter of each work determines the type of materials I will use and the fiber medium I will go forward executing in these works. My art pieces are well researched and painstakingly pursued in detailed and labor-intensive undertakings. I tend to do studies and my drawings are finished works of their own. I have been influenced by Native American design and by women who did samplers in early America and later in the industrial period where women worked in factories and left their homes in rural areas to the city.

This is a journey called: “1962: A Yearbook.” The pages are reconstructed of one’s own memory and you go from the beginning of the namesake of its dedication in the yearbook – a picture of the school building; and the boy’s on one side and the girl’s on the other side. It is neatly packaged representing the times in a cultural and political sense. My own entry has been rewritten and we learn who are the overachievers and like myself the underachievers. I look to celebrate the less popular because they had their own identity and recognized them now.
Again, it is interesting how we look at memory/remembrance and time does play tricks on us and the past always looks better. A memoir is the length of time over which one’s memory extends and each of the events enters our remembrance and we reminiscence.

More about Susan Berger here