CAROLYN NEWBERGER ART FROM IN & OUT OF THE FOREST Interview by Harryet Candee
If I may refer to your recent writing, Illuminating the Hidden Forest, ch. 42, we can see so much in the simple changing of the earth from winter to spring. (Softly into the Night, charcoal and collage, vs. “spring” photo) It is also an analogy you have brought to our attention of what exactly is going on our planet, so I have to ask you to please explain this theory that you have brought enlightenment to my artful mind. Carolyn Newberger: Liminal state refers to a place in between one social order and another. In anthropology, it is used to refer to the temporal space between rituals, with one ritual ending a season or a time of life and a subsequent ritual marking the beginning of the next. We are in such a time. Our quarantine marks the liminal space between the world as we knew it and the world as it will be. We don’t know what that world will look like, but 38 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photographs courtesy of the Artist
we know that it will not be the same. So this is a time of uncertainty, fear, and for many, a rethinking of what has been taken for granted and what is important. Changings of seasons can be liminal, as winter turns uncertainly into Spring, or late adolescence as children turn into adults, or pandemics, as our worlds change irrevocably into a new kind of order. My collage, Softly into the Night, captures a liminal moment, as the central figure, wrapped and floating through space, is between one state and another, perhaps between life and death. How and where and in what ways has your latest artistic voice been most clearly heard? I have found a new artistic voice in discovering and immersing myself in the forest. I am fortunate to live in a home surrounded by nature. With the
help of my little dog, rescued two years ago, whose every sense comes alive in the woods, I am acutely alive there, too. The forest stimulates my eyes to see, and my voice to write. Over the past two years I paint in the forest and pen essays describing what I am discovering. Many of these have been published in The Berkshire Edge, a publication of news, arts and ideas in the Berkshires. “I go where my soul takes me”, is a statement describing the many ways you live your life. Can you elaborate on a few examples of this nature of being for us? It’s very simple. If something excites me, I will pursue it through research, explore my thoughts through writing, or capture my impressions visually. Artistically, this can take many forms, such as the exploration of the human body in life
