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Sonya Berg catalog essay by Caitlin Topham: Experimenting with scale, materials & processes, Sonya Berg consistently returns to the landscape as her subject. Intrigued by romantic landscape artists Caspar David Friedrich & Thomas Cole & responding to family photographs of Niagara Falls, Berg assembles scenes of delicate beauty. Much of her work is the result of the act of layering, a process that links together an oeuvre of works otherwise disparate in size & material. She builds both floor-to-ceiling sculptures made from layered tracing paper tacked to the wall, as well as small 5" x 5" multi-media compositions made from layers of prints,paint, foil, paper & most intriguingly, vestiges of the layers' original sources. Rubbings reveal ghost traces of the fabric they once touched & cropped views of Niagara Falls originate from found vacation slides taken by her father. Berg accumulates memory as she adds materials & in turn, personalizes her exploration of nature. Beginning with a simple print, Berg builds compositions loosely defined by the print's etched lines, contours & shapes. In Bridal Falls (2008), for example, a cut made into the intaglio plate defines a waterfall's crest, & other printed lines are visible through the fall's transparent painted mist. Interested in illuminated manuscripts, Berg often incorporates pieces of metallic foil into the layers of the square compositions, as well as detailed & intricately etched arabesques. The materials feed her interest in recontextualizing intimate designs into broad landscapes, which she continues to do in her larger tracing paper assemblages. Continuing to employ layering techniques, Berg records the texture & pattern of bolts of brocade fabric on long sheets of tracing paper. Using a black conte crayon, she places the paper on top of the fabric & rubs the entire surface. What emerges is not dissimilar from preschool attempts at capturing leaf veins or gravestone curlicues of the fabric's design appear on the paper, in both clear & blurred passages. The memory of the fabric is, in effect, incorporated into the paper, which Berg then tears, layers & attaches to the wall. In Make My Falls (2008), the patterned conte rubbings became the textured, nuanced sky & mountains behind the rushing falls. Most of Berg's layered images respond to Niagara Falls (a frequent destination for her family as well as her mother's hometown), though she creates her own skies & contexts. The Falls become the visual tool that allow her to explore the connection of humankind to the landscape. Her consideration of great versus small & nature versus man readily translates to her layered landscapes which feature the juxtaposition of opposing elements. Small square compositions contain grand sweeping views of waterfalls; fragile tracing paper supports cascading water; detailed arabesques suddenly become infinite skies; & fabric patterns transferred to paper become textured rock surfaces. Using layering, Berg highlights the history inherent in landscapes & one's own connection to nature. She incorporates her own interests & family history into her images, as well as the evidence of her artistic processes, materials & experimentation & as a result, creates landscapes saturated with history, memory & ultimately, awe. |
