Biography

For a particular show, I felt it needed sculpture; so six years ago, I began to weld and never stopped. This led to a number of awards and public displays.  Most recently, two sculptures “Avis Gloriae et Lavdis” and “Nature Eternal,” were displayed on Riverside Park South in Manhattan. 

Discovering that thoughtful art can reach viewers of all races, gender, ages and socio-economic backgrounds became a driving force behind my desire to produce for the public.  Drawing from the unlimited wells of the invisible world--those who are left behind and nature unnoticed--are the source.  Building works outside has also made me acutely aware of my responsibility towards the planet.  Digging into the ground, introducing concrete and steel, I am very sensitive to the impact of sculpture on nature. To bring awareness and enhance my surroundings rather than jar and disrupt the world are my intentions.
As to my paintings, the critic and curator, Adrian Dannat wrote:

"Influenced by a lifetime of travel to some of the most remote parts of the globe, Berger's paintings are both a reflection of the visual richness of these experiences and a space to pause. Here, the world's fecundity is both marked yet stilled. As Berger's process is a slow and ritualistic one, the work likewise demands the viewer's quiet concentration, gift of time, and a willingness to listen to their silence. Part of Berger's pleasure in crafting these paintings is the celebration of a technique unchanged for thousands of years: the melting of encaustic, repeatedly painting her special custom-made wooden panels until they have the desired texture. The result is a tabula rasa awaiting Berger's impressions. With the introduction of pigments, and the use of wood-block patterns some centuries old--unearthed in India or Persia--Berger, like an exacting alchemist, builds each painting into a palimpsest of memories, moods and emotion, welcome emptiness incised, such varied signs of life.

These works are also overtly and unashamedly beautiful: their surfaces, their texture, their patterns and patina, their discrete, elegant presence lift us into a celebration of our world and lives. Berger's work is a heartfelt paean to the opposite of "entropy". Growth, change, creation – Berger's work is a hopeful and fertile present to us all.

​Born in St Louis, Missouri, Berger was educated at NYU, the Art Students League and New York Academy of the Arts. She has shown her work everywhere from the Rubin Museum in NY, the Bemis Center in Omaha; the American Consulate in Istanbul, and the US Embassy in Laos. A longtime resident of the Chelsea Hotel, she previously lived in Paris and Italy and currently divides her time between Manhattan and the Argentine."
© COPYRIGHT 2017, SHEILA BERGER