Ciel Bergman

Ciel Bergman
Artist Ciel Bergman
Born 1938
Berkeley, CA
Nationality American
Education San Francisco Art Institute California State University, Santa Rosa
Known for Painting
Awards SECA Art Award, 1975
Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, 1980

Ciel Bergman aka Cheryl Bowers (born Cheryl Marie Olsen, 1938, Berkeley, California) is an American painter of Swedish origin.[1] Her work, considered post-modern,[2] has a focus on the environment as well as feminine consciousness.[3][4]

Early career

Originally trained as psychiatric nurse, Bergman, then known as Cheryl Bowers,[5] began private study with portrait painters Peter Blos and Vincent Perez in the 1960s while working as an RN in Obstetrics.[6]

Awarded first place in painting at The Jack London Invitational Oakland, she returned to school. In 1973, she earned an MFA in Painting with Honors at the San Francisco Art Institute under Fred Martin,[7] while attending Graduate Seminars at UC Berkeley with Robert Hudson and Peter Plagens..

Work

Bergman's work primarily consists of paintings, drawings, prints, photography, constructions and prose using the metaphors of the water, the rose and rose petals.[6] Her paintings in the mid-1980s depicted aspects of goddess using symbols from the collective unconscious.[3]

In 1987, Bergman addressed the growing urgency of plastic recycling in Sea of Clouds What Can I Do, presented at Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum. An immersive installation filled the entire gallery space with seven dumpsters full of non-biodegradable waste plastic garbage gathered from for miles of Santa Barbara's Pacific Ocean coastline over the course of three or four months.[8] The installation included painted wall murals, sound, a video written and shot by the artist, photography, a meditation circle, writing and prayer sticks altar with interactive participation of visitors to the exhibition.[6] The installation resembled a post-nuclear ash site: floors were littered with sprawling piles of plastic which hung from the ceiling, sprinkled with flour.[4] After the exhibition closed, six dumpsters were needed to haul away the refuse.[8]

Plasphalt

Realizing that plastic, like asphalt, was a petroleum product, Bergman theorized that plastic could be recycled and used to build highways. She brought the idea to her former partner Gary Fishback, who patented it under the Plasphalt™.[8][9] Plasphalt, recycled plastic, made into a heat absorbing material and is added to asphalt to displace petroleum and hydrocarbon pollutants. While at the time 10% more expensive to use than traditional asphalt, Plasphalt lasts 25% longer. In 2002, Plasphalt was used to reinforce a 2-mile stretch of New Mexico's I-25. Fishback and Erik Bowers (Bergman's son) of TEWA Technology developed the project and materials, diverting 27% of all waste from landfill to highway. At the time TEWA's best local suppliers were Philips Semiconductors, Intel, Coca-Cola, and Sandia National Laboratories.[10] Unfortunately, because of lack of support from local government, the company went bankrupt; however, Plasphalt is now used to build roads in China and India.[11]

Academic Appointments

After lecturing at University of California, Berkeley (1973-1975), and teaching at the University of Oregon (1975-1976), Bergman became a full professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, Bergman and taught there from 1976 to 1994.[12] While at UCSB, she sat on the Academic Senate's affirmative action committee, actively teaching and hiring women.[6]

Personal life

Bergman has two children from her marriage to Lynn Franklyn Bowers. In 1988, the artist made what she felt was a necessary spiritual decision to legally change her name on her 50th birthday, from Cheryl (Marie Olsen) Bowers to Ciel (Olsen) Bergman, to honor her Swedish maternal grandmother, Emma Josephine Bergman. In Blood, Milk, Water, scholar Dr. Wendy Steiner explains, "Her name itself represents that sort of shift - from Cheryl (Olsen) Bowers to Ciel Bergman - becoming a landscape of 'sky' and' mountain' that is a typical background in her paintings."[6][13]

Awards

As Cheryl Bowers, Bergman was the recipient of a Society for the Encouragement of the Creative Arts SECA Art Award in painting, from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[14] and was included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art in 1975 as Cheryl Bowers.[15] In 1980, as Cheryl Bowers, she was honored with the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Under her name of Ciel Bergman, she was awarded a residency at The Djerassi Foundation in 2009 and the Ucross Art Foundation in 2014.[16]

Collections

Bergman's work is included numerous museum and corporate collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; the National Gallery, Washington, DC; Atlantic Richfield; Saks Fifth Avenue; The Capitol Group; Banco di Roma; and Bank of America, as well private collection in the United States, Europe and Asia.[1]

Further reading

Bergman's work is discussed in several books including:

References

  1. 1 2 Love, Barbara, J. (2007). Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. p. 39. ISBN 025203189X.
  2. ↑ Milbrandt, Melody (November 1998). "Postmodernism in Art Education: Content for Life". Art Education 51.6: 47–53.
  3. 1 2 Gadon, Eleanor W. (1989). The Once and Future Goddess:A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cult (1st ed.). HarperOne. pp. 268–271. ISBN 0062503545.
  4. 1 2 Selz, Peter (July 2003). "Ciel Bergman at R.B. Stevenson". Art in America 91 (7): 102.
  5. ↑ Albright, Thomas (1985). Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980 (1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 263. ISBN 0520055187.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Gablik, Steiner, Bergman (2004). Blood, Milk, Water. Santa Fe, NM: Linda Durham Contemporary Art. pp. 11–22.
  7. ↑ "Whitney Biennial 1975". archive.org. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 Selz, Peter (2006). Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond (First ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 233. ISBN 0520240537.
  9. ↑ "Patents by Assignee Plasphalt Project Ltd. Co.". Justia.com. Justia. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  10. ↑ "eWord: Plasphalt". Wired.com. Wired. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  11. ↑ Lippard, Lucy R. (2014). Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West. New York, NY: The New Press. p. 78. ISBN 1595586199.
  12. ↑ Who's Who of American Women, 1997-1998 (20th ed.). p. 79.
  13. ↑ Selz, Peter (2011). Eco-Art. Pori Art Museum. pp. 118–119. ISBN 9789525648270.
  14. ↑ "Fifty Years of Bay Area Art The SECA Awards". SFMOMA. SFMOMA. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  15. ↑ "Whitney Biennial 1975". archive.org. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  16. ↑ "Visual Arts Residency Alumni List". ucrossfoundation.org. Retrieved 29 September 2015.

External links

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