Tuesday, August 9, 2022 – ONE OF THE ARTIST FEATURED ON “CRAFT IN AMERICA”
FROM THE ARCHIVES
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022
THE 749th EDITION
Artist
Harriete Estel Berman uses post consumer, recycled materials to construct jewelry, Judaica to sculpture with social commentary. Berman’s art work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa. Her work has been acquired for the permanent collections of 16 museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Jewelry uses post-consumer recycled materials to reflect the values of our consumer society.
Judaica by Harriete Estel Berman focuses on the concept of Tikkun Olam “repair the world” with the use of post-consumer recycled tin cans.
Sculptures include domestic appliances remarking on the roles of women, the influence of advertising and commentary about our consumer society. Environmental commentary issues include the impact of lawns, and plastic waste in our oceans. Social commentary includes sculptures about our K-12 educational system.
“For nearly three decades, Harriete Estel Berman has made it her sacred mission to create work that addresses cultural issues and political hot buttons.” *
Harriete’s artwork turns ordinary materials from the waste stream of our society and recycles it into something extraordinary.
“Using every last scrap as a source of energy and inspiration she up-cycles her materials in uber-crafted, intens-ellectual objects of art and social commentary that are the ultimate expressions of sustainability.”*
Berman’s jewelry examines value and identity in our consumer society. Grass/gras‘ is a nine-foot square lawn about the unsustainable green lawn. Measuring Compliance and Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin critiques our educational system built on standardized testing. A new Judaica series is about the10 Modern Plaques.
An ongoing series of necklaces about identity in our consumer society using thin lines of black and white plastic made to look like a UPC code around your neck.
The Identity Collection uses colors, patterns, and UPC Bar Code as a commentary about how we create an identity in our consumer society by what we buy and why we buy it.
Sculpture
Since 1988, I have decided to use recycled materials diverted from their destiny as trash. Sculpture social commentary includes women’s roles in society, identity in our consumer society, environmental issues, a critique of our current educational system, gun violence, consumer debt and our unstable economy.
Tuesday Photo of the Day
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MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
On the face of it, it’s a RIOC Bus Stop Sign pointing in the wrong direction, but I still think that RIOC secretly and intentionally created the sign to commemorate Douglas Corrigan an American aviator, who in 1938 was nicknamed “Wrong Way.” He received his nickname after completing the first half of a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York City, in a plane that he rescued from a trash heap, but on his return trip, he had a navigational problem that sent him from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Ireland.
Ed Litcher
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
PBS CRAFTS IN AMERICA
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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