BeccaBernstein.net

Becca Bernstein's primary subject in art is people. Recently, her interest has broadened to include the physical environment that is inseparable from the human condition. In February 2008, Bernstein was awarded a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant for her public installation, The Last Room, in the bustling lobby of downtown's Portland Building. In conjunction with that installation, Bernstein exhibited 100 miniatures at the Gottlieb Gallery in Portland, Oregon, entitled Keyhole Miniatures.

Again and again, my art is drawn toward issues of community, to the awkward dance of human interdependence.
    For nine years, I have worked in various capacities with the elderly residents of senior care homes in Oregon and Scotland. Through this experience, I am witness to the modern anomaly of dividing the tribe – of the separation of generations from one another, each to their respective institutions. As an artist, my interest in this subject has led me to seek out communities of all kinds for my work, both traditional and uniquely present-day, exploring the relationships we have developed or abandoned in this contemporary age.
    Through my years of work in senior care homes, I have seen inside the one-room apartments of hundreds of elderly residents. Some rooms are like living museums; some are overwhelmed with piles of junk. Other rooms are sparse – furnished as if the occupant does not plan to stay long.
    The Last Room was the furnished apartment of a fictional resident in a long-term care facility. Along with a twin bed, dresser, chair and nightstand were knick-knacks, framed photos and worn, hand-quilted bedding. There was also evidence of life: a current calendar, reminder notes on the walls, an on-time alarm clock, a dinner tray with dishes, greeting cards and a mylar birthday balloon tied to a geriatric walker that faced a full-length mirror.
    In my art, I strive to create an intimacy between my subject and the viewer deep enough that there is a spark of recognition and, ultimately, empathy.

Keyhole Miniatures is an expansion of my thoughts about the interconnectedness of people to include the physical environment that is the theater for our lives. Seen in miniature and en masse, these glimpses of 100 lives are intended as clues to a universal story – one that binds us all in its familiarity. Our time in life together is transitory, and the objects we take along with us are evidence of who we are or have been.
Keyhole Miniatures is a series of 100 acrylic paintings on varying shapes and sizes of bevel-edged, wooden plaques – the kind my grandmother used for decorative tole painting. There are two basic subjects. The first is faces, if only in partial view – a child’s nose and mouth in one or an elderly woman’s eyes framed by her spectacles in another. The second is personal items of people of all ages: things cherished or things that were simply never discarded; useful things, forgotten things, collected and precious things, deteriorating things. The paintings are meant to be intimate and mysterious, a minute study of the personal and familiar.