Publication Date: Friday, October 14, 2005
Heavy metal
Heavy metal
(October 14, 2005) Artist makes political statements with a colorful touch, creating sculptures from tins, cans and dollhouses
by Rebecca Wallace
There are 900 blades of grass on the floor in Harriete Estel Berman's living room.
If you nudge the blades, they tinkle softly. Crouch closer, and you see that each is unique. They have stripes or flowers, elfin doll faces or Japanese characters.
But all the curling blades have one thing in common: they were snipped from tin cans and other metal containers before being "planted" into metal panels.
For Berman, art is recycling. It's also a statement.
Her patches of metal grass, which are on display at the Anita Seipp Gallery at Castilleja School in Palo Alto through Nov. 29, criticize the artificially green swaths of lawn blanketing suburbia.
It's a large-scale critique: the turf panels cover a total of 9 square feet and contain 32,400 blades of grass. Berman isn't exactly soft-pedaling her belief that lawns waste water and create dangerous runoff from fertilizers and herbicides.
"The idea of this pastoral landscape really came from England, but most areas of the U.S. don't have climates that support a green, lush lawn," she said in her living room, hair twisted up and long lines of metal dangling from her earlobes. "We spend time and money fostering this idea of a green lawn. Putting in plants and shrubs is much healthier for the environment."
Recycling and political statements have long gone hand in hand for many artists. For a creative type with a green bent, there's something irresistible about saving a tin can or a pop-top from a landfill -- and then thumbing your nose at the corporate world by using the item for something foreign to its original, commercial purpose.
A recent peek on eco-artware.com, for example, yields a 13-foot Absolut vodka bottle built by Australian artist John Dahlsen out of fiberglass and steel -- and discarded rubber flip-flop sandals. Then there's American artist Jeffrey O. Clapp, who fashions bells out of oxygen canisters discarded by climbers on Mount Everest.
As for Berman, her desire to meld recycling with art stretches back 20 years, when she was living in Palo Alto. She had been using brass, copper, wire and sheet metal to make a series of fanciful domestic appliances as part of statement on women's roles in society. Inspired by Palo Alto's eco-friendly environment, she became an avid recycler and started giving old materials new life in her work.
"They were ahead of the curve in recycling," she recalled. "You had to take your own materials to recycling centers, but at least they had centers."
Nowadays, Berman lives and works in a hilltop home in San Mateo, where vintage metal dollhouses swing from the rafters in the garage studio and shelves are filled with cans, cookie tins, lunchboxes and ashtrays.
"I get my materials from everywhere," she said. "My father used to send me tin cans from the East Coast."
Berman's hands clatter through the shelves as she flicks rectangles cut from popcorn tins and coffee containers. She smiles at an unexpected Star of David pattern found on a Milky Way candy bar tin. Her work also includes Judaica such as metal Passover Seder plates and mezuzot cases (holders for prayer scrolls put up outside doors).
The blades of grass being shown at Castilleja were each cut by hand, with help from a group of school kids and teachers and many pairs of shears one weekend in 1999. Berman's other tools also have a delightful whiff of the low-tech.
Every pair of pliers ever made seems to have a nest in this garage. Nearby is a "step shear" tool; you step down hard on a lever to cut large pieces of metal. Berman also demonstrates a vintage-looking roller, cranking a metal fragment with a pattern of violets through to create a crinkled effect.
One capacious corner is crammed with old tool kits for kids, looking 1950s-esque and sporting such titles as "Mr. Fix-er" and "American Tool Chest."
Appreciating the kitsch value, Berman says, "I don't have the heart to cut these up." Then she shakes her head. "They always have pictures of boys of them. And here I use tools all the time."
That sensibility is part of why Deborah Trilling, director of the Anita Seipp Gallery, wanted a Berman exhibition at Castilleja.
"What a great installation at a girls' school: a woman artist working in a nontraditional medium for women," she said.
"We'd be able to use her as a resource in exposing girls to installation art, which in general people don't necessarily see first-hand. They see watercolor or oil."
Trilling was also impressed by Berman's resume. Berman has had shows far and wide, including displaying her crafted appliances in England and her blades of grass in many states. Some of her work is in the permanent collections of the Jewish museums in New York and Berlin and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The current show is local because it received a grant from the Peninsula Community Foundation, which also helped pay for a video Berman made about her work.
Besides the blades of grass, the exhibition has another main focus: "Consuming Conversation," 200 teacups made from metal containers.
Piled high in precarious zigzags (interior rods and magnets are the secret to holding them together), the cups are a blast of color, thanks to their commercial roots. Blue-and-white Almond Joy labels are above garish red Slim-Fast logos and the op-art of Penguin Caffeinated Peppermint tins.
On the tops of the cups are messages spelled out in cut-out letters, looking like ransom notes but poking fun at ads and consumer culture, such as "Fill your expectations to overflowing" and "Polish your self-esteem."
The cups are cheerful, even impish, but one suspects there's a deeper message here. There is. Berman is pointing out that so much of modern-day life is snarled up in what we buy and how we consequently think of ourselves.
"Do you buy a Hershey bar or a Symphony bar? They cost the same, but are you a plain brown or a gold wrapper?" she said.
Berman chose the humble teacup as a symbol of how conversation -- true, valuable human interaction -- is on the decline, she said.
"If Grandma comes to town, instead of sitting at home with a cup of tea, you go to the mall and shop," she said, shaking her head. "Lots of people even go to the malls for their walks. There are even trick-or-treaters at the malls. The mall itself has become more of a social center."
What: An exhibit of towering teacups and huge panels of grass, all created from recycled metal materials by artist Harriete Estel Berman.
Where: The Anita Seipp Gallery at Castilleja School, 1311 Emerson St., Palo Alto.
When: Through Nov. 29, with a reception for the artist from 7 to 9 p.m. on Nov. 2. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. or by appointment.
Cost: Free.
Info: Call (650) 328-3160.
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