Ciel Bergman

CIEL BERGMAN

CIEL BERGMAN

watts art publications

CIEL BERGMAN is published by the Ciel Bergman Estate in collaboration with Watts Art Publications, 2021.

Essay by Patricia Watts Special thanks to Bridgit Koller, Sky Bergman, Dara Birnbaum, Betsy Damon, Suzi Gablik, Kirk de Gooyer, Gilah Yelin Hirsch, Dominique Mazeaud, Barbara Rogers, Fern Shaffer, Jerry Schefcik, Charles Shere, Nancy Macko, Beth Ames Swartz, Dyanna Taylor, and Nancy Zastudil.

Publication design by Jasmine Moorhead Publication © 2021 Watts Art Publications and the Ciel Bergman Estate. All artwork by Ciel Bergman © 2021 Ciel Bergman Estate, Santa Fe, NM. Essay “Ciel Bergman: Healing Self and Nature Through Beauty” © 2021 Patricia Watts. Some works in this catalogue are in private collections, unnamed for reasons of privacy. Please inquire with the Estate for further information.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Estate of Ciel Bergman.

Front Cover: Helios (Dark with Love). 2015. Oil on canvas, 36 x 58 in.

Back cover: Ciel Bergman, 2015; photo by Dyanna Taylor. Dedication page: Ciel Bergman, Baltic Sea, Sweden, 2013. Frontispiece (p. 4): Ciel Bergman, Mendocino, c. 1967. Page 38: Ciel Bergman in her studio, Santa Barbara, c.

1978. Page 104: Ciel Bergman, Abiquiu, NM, c. 1992.

Watts Art Publications issuu.com/wattsartpublications

DEDICATED TO CIEL BERGMAN ARTIST, MOTHER, PASSIONATE STUDENT OF LIFE

Your charismatic appetite for life was an infectious delight to all around you.

But when you were with your art, your passion, your expression, it was then that you were most alive.

Your inner critic demanded answers to life’s and art’s questions.

Your eye and hand were swift and precise.

With veils of paint and line you endeavored to deliver your message.

It is our hope to give others a glimpse at the breadth, depth, beauty, and mastery of your life’s work.

Your loving children, Bridgit Bowers Koller & Erik Bowers

CIEL BERGMAN: HEALING SELF AND NATURE THROUGH BEAUTY Patricia Watts “I have strived to create work that is sensuous, luminous, alive with emotional heat, honest, and transcendental.”—Ciel Bergman The energy that Ciel Bergman radiated as an artist, a friend, and a

and would take his girls to museums, as well as on long hikes from

mother left an enduring impression on those who knew her over the

Muir Woods to Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. Occasionally they

course of her life, whether as an art student in the San Francisco Bay

would make epic journeys through the Sierra Nevada. It was on these

Area, as a university professor in Santa Barbara for almost twenty

outings with her father that the young artist developed a deep love for

years, or during her years making art in northern New Mexico.

the natural world.

Bergman was born Cheryl Marie Olsen on September 11, 1938. Her mother, Evelyn Melbin, a California native, and her father, George

While attending Berkeley High School, Cheryl was on the cheerleading

Olsen, married in 1930. George, originally from the Midwest, moved

squad and fell for the football wide receiver, Lynn Bowers. She began

often as a child, eventually settling in Berkeley, where Cheryl was

working as a nurse’s aide at the local hospital at the age of fifteen

born and raised. The Olsens had a second child, Janice, who was four

and would paint portraits of family members, exploring her creative

years younger than her sister. During World War II and in the years that

abilities. The young couple were briefly separated when Lynn’s family

followed, they were a typical California family of four. By the early

moved north to Ukiah but were reunited when he returned to attend

1950s, however, Evelyn and George had separated, and subsequently

the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. There he studied civil

divorced. Evelyn remarried quickly, and eventually George did as

engineering through the ROTC program. Cheryl decided that she would

well. This was a difficult transition for Cheryl, as she worshipped her

need practical skills to support herself and made the decision to train as

handsome, strong, and silent father. He often painted watercolors

a psychiatric nurse at a school in nearby Santa Rosa from 1956 to 1958.

After completing their studies, Cheryl and Lynn married in 1959.

Paul Givant. They

Lynn was required to enlist in the US Army Corps of Engineers, and

purchased a home in

they were stationed in Alexandria, Virginia, where he did his basic

Lafayette, California,

training. A memorable highlight before shipping off to Germany,

after Lynn was offered

where they would spend the next four years, was a trip Cheryl took

a job with the City

with her mother to New England. At the age of twenty-two, following

of El Cerrito. Cheryl

a chance encounter with Norman Rockwell, Cheryl was invited to

found a part-time

pose for the famed American illustrator. Rockwell made a series of

job at Kaiser Hospital

drawings of her that were later published on the cover of the Saturday

in Walnut Creek. In

Evening Post (see below). This was an exciting surprise to the artist but

1965 their second

was something that she rarely spoke of with her friends or colleagues.

child, Erik, was born.

While she was living in

In 1966 Cheryl took

Germany, Cheryl often

private art classes

visited the museums,

with the illustrator

where

became

Vincent Perez, who

ciel bergman. self-portrait in lafayette. 1965. oil on

familiar with the work

had recently graduated

canvas, 24

of Marcel Duchamp.

from the California College of Arts and Crafts. She also took private

In July 1962 she gave

classes with Peter Blos, a German immigrant who taught portrait

birth to her first child,

painting in Oakland (above). Lynn was on an engineering career path,

Bridgit, while stationed

and Cheryl continued to follow her passion for the arts. Working as a

in Frankfurt. In 1964

nurse and raising two small children, however, was simply not enough

the family returned to

for a woman with dreams of becoming an artist. That year Cheryl and

the Bay Area, where

Lynn separated and divorced.

she

x

32 in.

they lived briefly in saturday evening post cover with illustration by norman rockwell, november 25, 1961. model was cheryl bowers (ciel bergman).

6

Berkeley with Cheryl’s

Cheryl took her two young children to Mendocino, where she initially

mother, Evelyn, and

worked at Fort Bragg Hospital. This arrangement was short-lived, and

her second husband,

by mid-1967, the beginning of the Summer of Love, she decided to

make a clean break from nursing. She committed herself to making

and ramps that transformed the school into a vision of the future.

a living as an artist from that moment on, working under her married

Postwar modernism had arrived in the Bay Area. And the wider world

name, Cheryl Bowers. To mark this transition, she burned her nursing

was changing as well. Nineteen sixty-nine also saw the creation of

license and quit her job. She worked part-time as a waitress at the

Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Seagull Inn and took classes at the Mendocino Art Center, where she painted a series of Victorian-style portraits of local characters. These works would be featured in her first solo exhibition at Gallery West in Mendocino in 1968. Bowers and her two children, along with a new romantic partner, moved to a small cabin on a derelict farm in Manchester, south of Mendocino. There she was befriended by a group of artists and creative thinkers who lived communally on The Land.

In 1969 Bowers entered a painting in Oakland’s Jack London Art Invitational. The work, Preliminary Doll Factory (1968), won first prize. This was encouraging, although by the end of the year the prize money had dried up, and she was struggling to support her children. During the holidays her mother persuaded her to come back to Berkeley to get her bearings. In 1970, at the age of thirty-two, she enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). It had been almost ten years since the school, formerly the California School of Fine Arts, had changed its name. The architect Paffard Keatinge-Clay was hired in 1969 to create a new addition, the brutalist concrete rooftop

ciel bergman. wander. 1966. oil on canvas, 66

x

66 in.

7

ciel bergman. desecrated feminin. 1971. oil on canvas with airbrush, 66

8

x

65 in.

Since Bowers already had a two-year nursing degree, she was able to

representational and full of expression. In 1971 she titled this

combine her BA and MFA into one three-year program at SFAI. She

expanding series The Spiritual Guide Maps (see p 10 and pp. 40–43).

studied painting under Fred Martin, a prominent figure in the Bay Area art scene at the time. The young artist began a series of large

Dara Birnbaum, a New York–based artist who was also a student

minimalist paintings on unstretched Belgian linen, the complete

at SFAI during the early 1970s, recently recalled, “The painting

opposite of anything she had tried before. She experimented with

department was like all departments [at SFAI], if you put good energy

new acrylic paints and tried airbrushing on several surrealist-style

in, you got good energy out.” She added that they were not given

works (p. 8). She also made a few sand paintings.

a traditional education, but students were allowed to experiment on their own. The counterculture was becoming mainstream at this

The 1960s saw the emergence of Warhol’s pop art in New York and

time, with demonstrations on college campuses across the nation.

Bruce Conner’s funk art in the Bay Area, as well as minimalism,

In 1971 the feminist movement became official with the debut of

conceptual art, and happenings. Color field painting had come

Ms. magazine as an insert in an issue of New York magazine. Female

and gone, but at SFAI Bowers seems to have been channeling the

students were instructed by an all-male faculty, who were not always

legacy of Rothko as her paintings became ethereal, devoid of any

helpful. Sam Tchakalian, who was also one of Bowers’s teachers,

recognizable imagery. Having arrived at the school as a figurative

stood out for Birnbaum as a tough and engaging painting instructor.2

painter, she began to deconstruct her subject matter. She referred to this process as “emptying out her canvas.”1

In 1972, after spending two and half years living with her mother and stepfather, making illustrations for Victor Bergeron, the owner of Trader

As many color field painters had done in the late 1940s and 1950s,

Vic’s restaurant, and working at The Dirty Rainbow Art Supplies store

Bowers, inspired by European modernism, wiped her canvases

in Berkeley, Bowers changed residence again. This time she and her

clean. She spread out large unstretched linen canvases on the

new partner, Bruce Heller, moved into a studio warehouse, building

floor and laid down an acrylic binder (Rhoplex AC-33) for the

out the interior themselves before having her children join them. It

foundation. She then added powdered and anodized metallic dusts,

was located in the Berkeley Flats on Fourth Street near Gilman Street.

making a solid flat field of a single color. A total of forty-eight of

Bridgit, the artist’s daughter, and her brother, Erik, came to visit often

these grand experiments, which she continued to make through

and remember the studio being around the corner from the sculptor

1977, represented the primordial emotions locked within us all.

Peter Voulkos’s place. Pete, as he was known, held wild parties every

The paintings started out with subtle symbolism of a technological

Friday night with music, poker, and lots of merriment. And although

consciousness bubbling to the surface and later became overtly

they were living a bohemian lifestyle, Voulkos had urged Bowers to

9

ciel bergman. spiritual guide map #1. 1970. acrylic on linen, 57

x

96 in.

secure a teaching position and buy a house, stressing the instability

art historian Peter Selz, who had recently launched the UC Berkeley

of being an artist with young children.3

art museum, was traveling to New Mexico. He invited Bowers to come along. Selz was on the hunt for paintings by the American modernist

10

In the spring of 1972 Bowers audited a seminar at UC Berkeley with

John Marin. While in New Mexico, he offered to take Bowers to

Peter Plagens, who had recently received a painting fellowship from

Abiquiú to meet Georgia O’Keeffe, who was eighty-five years old at

the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. The gifted abstract formalist

the time. O’Keeffe showed Bowers one of her favorite high-desert

painter and writer was thirty-three at the time, three years Bowers’s

locations, Cerro Pedernal, where the younger artist, hanging on every

junior. She also worked part-time as a graphic artist for Francis Ford

word spoken by the mother of American modernism, heard O’Keeffe

Coppola at his American Zoetrope studio. That year her close friend the

say, “I want you to fall in love with my mountain.”4

After her return from New Mexico, Bowers applied and was accepted for a six-month fellowship at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque. The print workshop had become a division of the University of New Mexico in 1970, after ten years operating in Los Angeles. In July 1972 Bowers loaded her Volvo and drove to New Mexico with Bridgit and Erik. She enrolled her children in a local school for the fall semester and went to work making lithographic prints. By the end of the residency she had made more than two hundred prints, including an editioned suite of seven prints on Arches paper titled Planting Earth from Sky, with title and colophon pages. She also made two unique editions on elk hide with hanging leather ties, including Earth License (opposite) and a very similar work, Map for Encounter with Hairless Government Heads. All editions were made in collaboration with the master printer Christopher Cordes.

When her Tamarind fellowship ended in December 1972, Bowers returned to Berkeley to join her children, who had flown back earlier to her visit her mother for the holidays. In January 1973 the artist began her final semester at SFAI. The Supreme Court decision that month in Roe v.

Wade established a woman’s legal right to an abortion, the result of years of feminist activism. It was a liberating time for a young woman. During the spring Bowers picked up the pace and scale of her work, completing a total of 20 paintings on unstretched Belgian linen, all painted on the floor, one measuring 163 inches in width. Bowers graduated from SFAI

ciel bergman. earth license. 1972. lithograph on leather, 18 x 26 in. (approx.)

with honors in 1973, earning both a BA and an MFA. Her work was

After graduation Bowers immediately took jobs as a teaching assistant

included in the Home Show at the Cow Palace in Daly City, and she

to Sam Tchakalian at SFAI, and to Mary Lovelace O’Neal at UC

exhibited selected linens and new watercolors in two separate shows at

Berkeley. She made time to audit a graduate seminar with Robert

Malvina Miller Gallery in San Francisco the following year.

Hudson at Berkeley as well. Bowers continued work on her linen

11

ciel bergman painting memnew, c. 1975.

12

series and started including symbols such as the letter Y, water holes,

employed artist would be like, paying her way with earnings from her

the human figure, and words. In 1974 the artist was invited to teach a

art practice and teaching. Responding to the rewards of her creative

painting class at California State University, Hayward, now California

energies, she dedicated two more years to her linens, focusing on a

State University, East Bay. She had lost the lease on the warehouse

new series she titled The Black Tool Paintings. These were personal

space and decided to buy a house on Oxford Street, at the edge of the

meditations painted with a completely new palette of rich colors.

Berkeley foothills, not far from her mother’s house. During this period

Her newfound confidence allowed for bolder choices, especially in

Bowers produced seven large unstretched linen paintings, among them

subject matter, including three-dimensional psychological spaces

Conception Accident (1974), inspired by Eva Hesse, which included a

filled with symbols both imagined and real. These were the final

grid of egglike forms with nipples and vaginas inside.5

paintings of her Spiritual Guide Maps series, which she painted through 1977.

In 1975 Bowers’s work was included in two important group shows.

Three of her linen paintings were selected by a cadre of curators,

In the spring of 1976 Bowers was offered a teaching position at the

including Barbara Haskell and Marcia Tucker, for the prestigious

University of Oregon in Eugene, which she gladly accepted. Although

Whitney Biennial. The three paintings—Y Is Same as Knot, Two

there was no guarantee beyond the one-year appointment, the move

Lips for Rrose (Duchamp), and Debriefing with Rrose, all from

ended her relationship with Bruce Heller. Again she purchased

her linen series painted in 1974—were featured in the exhibition

a home for herself and her children, as Voulkos had urged her to.

catalogue.6 Bowers’s work was selected for the coveted Society for

During Bowers’s brief tenure, she was invited to paint a mural on

the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award at the San

campus and had a solo exhibition of her Black Tool Paintings at the

Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where she exhibited

university gallery. She started painting with oils again after twelve

five of her linen paintings: Trying to See Behind (1971), Lox (1975),

years of working in acrylic. Bowers had struggled to feel a part of the

Cactus America (1974; p. 42), The Wave (1975; p. 43), and (There

community, and by the spring in 1977 she was offered a teaching

Is) A Red Light on the Chase Board (1975). In conjunction with

position at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In June

the exhibition, she was invited to teach a life-drawing class at

she sold her home, for a profit, and took her children to Berkeley for a

SFMOMA. And the proverbial icing on the cake in this pivotal year

family visit before they moved to Southern California to start a new life.

was an appointment as a lecturer at UC Berkeley for the 1975–76

This career move would keep Bowers employed for the next eighteen

academic year.

years, teaching painting and drawing. She was offered the position thanks to the artist/professor Irma Cavat, who had argued for more

This offered Bowers the opportunity to experience what being an

women faculty at UCSB. The two became close friends and colleagues.

13

After she settled into her new job and city, Bowers made eight large paintings and assembled her first triptych on stretched canvas, measuring twelve feet wide, in 1978. In the spring of the following year, she exhibited these new paintings, which she referred to as Dialogues and Symbols—including Tribute to Subatomic Mysteries, Graffiti, Score, Match, and Tole (pp. 44–48)—at Hyde Art Gallery at Grossmont College near San Diego. The paintings reflected her interest in science and unseen structures of worlds within worlds.

These symbols appeared to represent human thoughts as well as mappings or accountings of the complexities of a modern world.

Bowers also received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1979, a grant for artists whose work showed promise yet had not received wide attention. ciel bergman. china poems

I did not know what it meant to make work which is healing, so completely unintegrated was the directive, with any tenet of 20th Century Art. What is healing? What needs to be healed? How can an artist heal? Can it be done in paint? What is IT? —Ciel Bergman7

(inner

decisions). 1980. watercolor on rag, 22

x

30 in.

artist silent for days, and she was unable to paint immediately after returning home. She eventually picked up a paintbrush and created a series of thirty-four watercolors described as a “journal of mood and inspiration,” which she titled China Poems (above).8 The series was exhibited at the Ruth S. Schaffner Gallery in Santa Barbara in the fall of 1980. The following year Bowers decided to build a new studio, a third-floor addition to her home in Santa Barbara, which led to a

In 1980 Bowers traveled to China with a group of photographers. This

long-term romantic partnership with her contractor, Gary Fishback.

was the first time she experienced ancient architecture in a natural

14

landscape. She described having an epiphany at the top of the steps

In 1982 Bowers’s work was included in the exhibition Fresh Paint:

while walking into the Garden of Tranquility in Beijing: “A voice, but

Fifteen California Painters, curated by George W. Neubert at SFMOMA.

more like a silent force outside my consciousness said firmly, ‘Your

The survey show was the second in a new program titled Resource/

task as an artist is to make work which is healing.’” This rendered the

Response, designed to reflect current issues and ideas in contemporary

California art. Painters from both Northern and Southern California were invited, including Roger Herman and Don Suggs from Los Angeles. As Neubert wrote in the exhibition brochure, “Cheryl Bowers’s narrative paintings utilize symbolic forms which serve as a journalistic description of events both imagined and experienced.”9 Two of Bowers’s paintings were included, Coal and Rice (Hot Bricks and Ashes) (1982) and Temple after the Passage of Existentialism

ciel bergman. red fence. 1978–79. oil on canvas and linen, 73 1/4 x 265 in. collection

of the san francisco museum of modern art.

(1981; p. 49). Her dealer in downtown Los Angeles at the time, Kirk de Gooyer, was instrumental in her inclusion in the SFMOMA show

From 1984 to 1986 Bowers produced approximately twenty

and the museum’s acquisition of her monumental horizontal work

paintings, and in 1986 she was awarded a full professorship at

Red Fence (1978–79; opposite), which was accessioned into the

UCSB. This signaled that she would not need to move again for

museum’s collection following the show.

the foreseeable future. She collaborated with her friend the Los Angeles activist and performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, who

In the fall of 1983 Bowers was given a solo exhibition at Kirk de Gooyer

projected Bowers’s “monolith-like paintings” as the backdrop of

Gallery with catalogue and essay by the Oakland art critic Charles

her work L.O.W. in Gaia, performed at The Kitchen in New York

Shere. The show featured fourteen mostly large-scale horizontal works,

in the fall of 1986.12 This performance was based on a three-week

including a 216-inch-wide canvas titled Temple of Essentialism /

vacation Rosenthal took in the Mojave Desert, where at age sixty

Oceans (1983), which was placed in a corporate art collection. Shere

she came to terms with her aging body, making comparisons with

stated, “Her paintings grew steadily in the ’70s away from first-person

the aging of the earth. Bowers identified with this work and was

subjectivity toward a wholly different kind of personal engagement,

inspired by Rosenthal’s ability to express her anger. Rosenthal was

a more authentic one because of greater utility to the rest of us; the

a cultural mother to many women artists at the time. Bowers later

kind of engagement in which the artist is present as mind and eye but

recommended her for a visiting lectureship and performance at

not as ego—an important distinction, having to do with the distinction

UCSB in 1991.

between artist as creator (Heroic, Romantic, Renaissance creator) and the artist as transformer or interpreter.”10 Shere attempted to give

In 1987 Bowers noticed the vast proliferation of plastics in her

Bowers’s work an important context in a male-dominated art world. In

immediate environment and proposed a large-scale environmental

a recent interview he noted, “If it wasn’t for women, painting would

installation to Betty Klaussner, then director of the Santa Barbara

have died in the 1970s.”11

Contemporary Art Forum. The artist decided to collaborate with the

15

ciel bergman. sea of clouds what can i do. 1987. site-specific mixed-media installation made in collaboration with nancy merrill.

16

sculptor Nancy Merrill on the project, titled Sea of Clouds What Can

waste streams. Lucy Lippard had written about Ukeles’s Manifesto for

I Do, and they filled the entire gallery with seven dumpsters’ worth

Maintenance Art, 1969!, a proposal for an exhibition that included the

of nonbiodegradable waste, discarded plastic that they gathered

artist performing cleaning chores.16 Ukeles’s subsequent multimedia

from a four-mile stretch of the Santa Barbara coastline over several

performance and installation projects included Touch Sanitation

weeks. The artists also painted murals, made video of the sea and sky

(1979), Social Mirror (1983), and Ceremonial Arch IV (1988). The

changing colors from dawn to dusk, and presented photographs of sea

latter work, produced while she was artist-in-residence at New York’s

animals entangled with plastics. There was an interactive meditation

sanitation department, included more than five thousand gloves used

circle and an altar where visitors were invited to leave prayer sticks,

by maintenance workers. In San Francisco in the 1970s Jo Hanson

which they made with materials provided for them by the artists.

turned the act of sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house into a

Large plastic “clouds” hung from the ceiling, and the floors were

performance. In 1990, she founded the artist-in-residence program at

littered with sprawling piles of plastics and powdered with flour to

Recology San Francisco, a private waste management facility, which

resemble a postapocalyptic environment (p. 16). After the exhibition

provides artists with access to discarded materials, a stipend, and

concluded, the refuse was hauled away to the dump since recycling

a large studio space. Although Sea of Clouds was an anomaly for

centers did not yet exist.13

Bowers, her only immersive installation, she shared with Ukeles and Hanson an instinctive awareness of artists’ moral responsibility to

Bowers loved the sense of community that developed from the work,

make work that calls attention to the harm that humans were inflicting

a feeling rarely felt by painters working alone in their studios.14

on nature and, in turn, themselves.

Barbara Rogers, a longtime friend from the Bay Area whom Bowers had invited to UCSB to give a lecture before the closing of the

Also in 1987 Bowers invited the American art historian and critic

exhibition in August, stated that the installation was “epochal” in a

Suzi Gablik, who was living in London at the time, to be a visiting

recent interview. “Bowers literally cleaned the beach and made an

lecturer for one year at UCSB. Bowers and Gablik had connected in

immersive artwork from it all, which was very well executed.”15 The

the mid-1980s, possibly around the time Gablik published her critique

work was an act of passion, a onetime event that would eventually

of contemporary art Has Modernism Failed? (1984). Gablik recalls

lead the artist to an invention using recycled plastics.

that Bowers had traveled to Cadaqués, Spain, where Gablik would holiday in the summers, for a visit prior to her lectureship. During the

Bowers’s installation had parallels with the work of her female

fall Bowers made the first in a series of eight paintings titled Good Wild

contemporaries, including Mierle Laderman Ukeles in New York and

Sacred (1984–89), inspired by the famous Gary Snyder essay published

Jo Hanson in San Francisco, who each performed works that addressed

in 1984, also a rare book that was given to the artist by Gablik.17

17

That fall Gablik introduced Bowers to Gilah Yelin Hirsch, a painter in

we may not regain the courage, the hope, or the heart to imagine the

Los Angeles who had recently been given a MacDowell Fellowship.

visionary ethics of a new direction.”19

Together they visited Hirsch’s studio, and Bowers made trips on her own to visit Hirsch. Bowers was intrigued by Hirsch’s research

Before Gablik’s lectureship wrapped up in the spring of 1988, she

on the origin of the alphabet based on patterns in nature, an

and Bowers made a short trip to the nearby Ojai Foundation for an

alphabetic morphology. Hirsch later produced a film about this titled

event and met the founder, Joan Halifax. Gablik had made a collage

Cosmography: The Writing of the Universe (1995). Hirsch’s theory was

work depicting a curled orange snake that was printed on the cover

that forms in nature mirror shapes of neurons and neural processes

of Shamanic Voices, written by Halifax in 1979. Gablik and Halifax

inherent in perception and cognition. Bowers was fascinated to

would remain close for many years thereafter. Gablik desired to

learn from Hirsch that visualization in nature is considered a healing

return stateside permanently, and Bowers tried to help her get a

practice, and she then painted Gilah’s Tree (1987; p. 55).18

full-time appointment at UCSB. Because of campus politics and the economy, however, these plans were not realized. Gablik left Santa

In 1988 Bowers painted a series titled Linking, A through J (pp. 56–59).

Barbara and returned to the United Kingdom for three more years

Ten triptychs were each assembled with three small and medium-size

before she moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, to take a full-time teaching

paintings, grouped as a single work. The artist incorporated lead and

appointment in 1991. Bowers and Gablik stayed in touch through

gold leaf onto the canvases and designed handmade painted frames,

the years, and Gablik wrote about Bowers’s Sea of Clouds plastics

which she considered integral to the works. Imagery consisted of

installation in her book The Reenchantment of Art (1992).20

waterways and equations for chemical formulas, along with layers

18

of dirt, rocks, straw, and ash, representing elements of the earth. The

In May 1988 Bowers attended the Transformative Artist’s Conference

series was included in the exhibition An Issue of Water at the Donna

and Workshop at the Rim Institute near Payson, Arizona, organized

Beam Fine Art Gallery at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the

by the Phoenix-based painter Beth Ames Swartz. This was the first

spring of 1992. The six-person show was organized by gallery curator

of two consecutive National Conferences on the Spiritual in Art. A

Jerry Schefcik and included works by Bergman’s colleague and friend

group of women activists and feminists assembled to share their work

the pioneering water artist Betsy Damon. Damon’s formative work

and concerns “arising from irrefutable evidence of future climate

A Memory of Clean Water, a cast-paper river installation made in

change.”21 Bowers participated in a workshop with Hirsch titled

1986, was also included. Bowers stated in the exhibition catalog, in

“Creative Behavior from the Inside Out: Overcoming Preciousness

reference to her desire to heal the earth, “I believe unless we regain

and Fear.” During the workshop the artists’ “individual differentiation

and acknowledge our primal psychological need for deep beauty,

of experiences helped propel [Bowers] on her own trajectory,” and

she came to the conclusion that her name was too ordinary.22 She decided that for her fiftieth birthday, coming up in September, she would officially change it to Ciel (See-EL) Bergman. This was her way of connecting with her ancestral lineage and honoring her Swedish maternal grandmother, Emma Josephine Bergman. Ciel means “sky” in French, and it also means “heavenly.” To mark the name change, conference participants gathered in a grove to honor Bergman’s dramatic decision. Years later, Bergman and some of her friends were concerned about whether her name change was the right thing to do. Through the 1990s Bergman would often sign her work with both names.23 During the summer of 1988 Bowers participated in a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. There she made a series of approximately thirty nature paintings, bud and branch studies in oil on gessoed rag (pp. 60–61). She also completed her first and only outdoor public art commission, a tile mural fountain titled The Waterfall, located

ciel bergman. the waterfall. 1988. tile mural fountain at paseo nuevo, santa

at Paseo Nuevo, an open-air mall off State Street in Santa Barbara

barbara, ca. collaboration with sheldon kaganoff.

(opposite). The fountain, which was a collaborative work with

Her sources lie within the surrealist’s dream, the romantic’s intuition

Sheldon Kaganoff, was later demolished in 2011.

and dynamism, the classicist’s sense of order and primarily the spiritualist’s openness to forces that supersede individual fate.”

In 1989 Ciel Bergman continued her series the Good Wild Sacred.

Hammond goes on to interpret the work with the flower as heroine,

In these paintings the artist became transfixed on the alchemical,

with its “ancient metaphorical power as goddess, restorer of hope,

including symbols such as the Black Madonna and flowers (p. 22 and

antidote to madness.”24 Ironically one critic gave the show negative

pp. 62–63. Five of the eight paintings in the series were exhibited at

reviews because the work appeared derivative of that of Cheryl

Dorothy Goldeen Gallery in Santa Monica, California, in September.

Bowers, as the artist’s daughter, Bridgit, recalled.

In a review in Art News, Pamela Hammond stated, “What Bergman chooses to paint is fueled by her commitment to a dialogue on critical

In June 1990 documentation of Bergman’s plastics installation Sea

ecological matters. This is not art about art, fashion or entertainment.

of Clouds What Can I Do (1987) was included in the exhibition

19

From 1990 to 1991 Bergman made only a few paintings. Her practice of painting large works came to a halt with the economic recession, from the summer of 1990 through spring of 1991. During this period the artist made a series of twenty small graphite works on Mylar, which she titled Antidote Drawings (at left). She also painted several goddess paintings including a large work with two flowers, an orchid and a lotus, named after the Sumerian goddess of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, and her younger sister, the goddess Inanna (p. 64).

In June 1991 Bergman participated in a weekend conference on beauty at Pacifica Institute in San Francisco. Participants included Gablik, the psychologist James Hillman, and ciel bergman. antidote #4. 1991. graphite and mixed medium on mylar, 22

20

x

30 in.

the writer Ursula K. Le Guin. In Bergman’s talk she reflected on her decision, following

Garbage Out Front: A New Era of Public Design at the Municipal Art

her trip to China in 1980, to make paintings that are healing and

Society in New York. And in September she traveled to Chicago to

her belief that the essential medicine in our collective healing is

participate in a panel titled “Cultural Imperatives in the Ecological

beauty. “We need to remove the taboo and make [beauty’s] healing

Age” at Artemisia Gallery. The invitation came from Fern Shaffer, an

powers a fundamental structure in our new ethic, based in a new

ecological artist and the director of the women’s cooperative gallery at

cosmology. We must bring it into religion, politics, economics,

the time, whose solstice ritual performance was the featured image on

the sciences, the arts, health care, education, environmentalism,

the cover of Gablik’s book The Reenchantment of Art. Other panelists

psychology, every act of imagination. It must be internalized, an

included Gablik; Othello Anderson, a photographer and collaborator

inner core of our institutions.”26 While striving to harness beauty’s

with Shaffer; and the philosopher David T. Hansen.25

healing powers in her paintings, Bergman was also conscious of

its darker implications and, most importantly, that it is twinned

Mexico. Anticipating retiring there, two years prior Bergman had

with responsibility.

purchased a five-acre parcel in the bosque near Abiquiú following a holiday vacation where she and her partner Gary Fishback spent

In 1992 Bergman’s work was included in the exhibition Dreams and

time with family in Santa Fe. Since Bergman had summers off from

Shields: Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art at the Salt Lake

teaching, she and Fishback would often explore the surrounding lands.

Art Center in Utah. The exhibition was guest curated by the artist

That summer she sold her two parcels of land near Abiquiú and the

Frank McEntire and accompanied by a catalogue, which includes the

couple proceeded to build a small cabin to stay in while their 4,000–

following statement from Bergman: “True art is socially responsible,

square foot elliptical adobe studio and living space with extensive

communicative, connected. I believe that the artist is to society what

views was being constructed.

the soul is to the body. The artist identifies, tracks, uncovers, and offers for consideration the deepest pulse of the decades in which he

Bergman returned to Santa Barbara to teach in the fall. She was invited

or she lives. I believe the artist has a profound social responsibility

to be a keynote speaker at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the

to elucidate the truest thread of the psychic life of a people in space

Divine in New York at a three-day conference titled “The Sacred

and time.”27 Bergman also gave a keynote, “The Heart of Helping,”

in the Arts: Transcending Contemporary Taboos; Reawakening to

at the associated symposium, titled “Celebrating the Spirit,” along

Beauty, Wonder, and Sacred Values through the Arts.” Other speakers

with Gablik. Lita Albuquerque and Beth Ames Swartz were among

included the ecologist and writer Thomas Berry, the green architect

the artists also included in the exhibition.28

William McDonough, and the environmental artist Lowry Burgess.

She participated in a panel discussion titled “The Path to Beauty,” also

To make her large narrative works, Bergman uses all the things that

including Alex and Allyson Grey and Beth Ames Swartz. Bergman’s

interest her such as scientific theory, language, humor, techniques of

painting Good Wild Sacred (Denial of Death of Imagination) (1987; p.

applying paint, anger, disorder, and inversion. She rearranges all this

22) was featured on the conference brochure. The painting depicted

information to create a journal of the things she witnesses. She plans a

a large iris flower in the foreground with a mystical landscape

language of color, symbol, and words and then paints her experience.

composition in the background, painted in muted colors as if looking

Part of her search is for something to end the loneliness experienced

through a veil. In her keynote lecture, titled “Notes on a Pilgrimage

in Western culture. She says that she believes, like Duchamp, “that

to Beauty,” Bergman discussed how humans are complicit in the

the best paint services spirit, wit and mind.”—Frank McEntire29

supreme crisis of environmental degradation. She listed the many ways that beauty is slowly fading as pollution, hunger, overcrowding, and

In 1993, Bergman bought 280 acres on Cerro Pedernal in New

sanitation problems leave less and less for the next generations.30

21

ciel bergman. good wild sacred (denial of death of imagination).

22

1987.

oil on canvas, 72

x

96 in.

I chose the Iris, because this plant and flower has always been representative. She was to the Greeks the feminine aspect of the God Mercury; the bearer of the message. She was the flower of the Black Madonna. WHAT IS IRIS’ MESSAGE? —Ciel Bergman 31

She concluded: “Ignoring any instinct of our mortal interdependence, we live in an inherited model of Nature and Culture as being opposite.

To continue reifying the habitual contagion of cynicism, horror, the ugliness and despair which many of us may feel, is to reinforce the problem!”33 The following year, in 1994, Bergman announced her early retirement from her professorship UCSB at age fifty-six. Her friend

Bergman’s primary thesis on the taboo against beauty in

and colleague Barbara Rogers, who was an artist and professor of

contemporary American art, “Notes on a Pilgrimage,” focused on

painting and drawing at the University of Arizona in Tucson, was

the split between nature and culture in society. She felt that for

concerned about Bergman’s decision. Most tenured professors

centuries the value and perception of beauty was held to be a

worked through their sixties, until either their health failed or the

quality of nature to benefit humankind. She stated in her keynote,

university offered them the golden handshake.34 Bergman believed

“That was until the mid 18th Century when relativism foundered

that the university system was killing her creative soul and she was

the meaning.” She also quoted Hume, “Beauty is no quality in

destined to live in New Mexico ever since her first visit in 1972,

things themselves. It exists in the mind, which contemplates them,

when O’Keeffe encouraged her to fall in love with Cerro Pedernal.

and each mind perceives a different beauty.” She continued,

Her decision to take early retirement, to follow her dreams,

“Beauty then fell to aesthetics, became a cultural and theoretical

exemplified the kind of person Bergman was, passionate and of the

discipline, a discourse of the cognitive, rational and linear,

earth, displaying joie de vivre.

removed from the senses, from the sensual body, removed from imagination beauty became aesthetic and anesthetic all at once,

In 1994, as the artist wound down her teaching career and prepared

a discourse of Culture versus Nature. The value of beauty, after

to leave California, she began thirteen paintings and painted the

centuries of gradual demise, was finally fully repressed nearly 200

first oil in her Antidote series, titled Antidote Painting #1 (Stone and

years ago.” She concluded, “I further believe that the deletion of

Deer Hoof) (1994–97; p. 67). The work presented human and nature

what we might call natural beauty for everyone, from our value

references as primordial source materials. The detail and precision

system, has allowed us on an unconscious level, to disregard and

of this work were evidence of the three years she spent completing

destroy that which once existed so abundantly in stunning display

it. Before Bergman sold her home in Santa Barbara, she held a big

in the natural world.”32

studio sale to reduce the number of paintings she would need to

23

move and to add to her retirement fund. She and Fishback officially

included pre-Columbian totems, rose petals, and symbols of the

moved to New Mexico that summer. That same year she started a series

heart, brain, and connection. They were Bergman’s expression of

of Moons, depicted floating in colorful, painterly universes, often with

female consciousness and spirituality. She also painted another

flowers whose stems wrap around their circumference (pp. 68–71).

three Invisible Toxicity paintings.

Staying in the cabin while her new home was under construction,

In 1998 Bergman’s work was featured in a small solo survey at the

Bergman went to work on a series of small landscapes that she titled

Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Davis.

Invisible Toxicity. She painted at least fifteen that depicted colorful New

The show included nine works: three watercolors from her China

Mexico lands, including one featuring a black dot and a white dot floating

Poems series from 1980; a very large painting from 1983 (168 in.

symmetrically over trees and skies (pp. 74–76). The dots represent the

wide); a triptych with handmade frame titled Red #6 from 1993

invisible toxins as well as a tantric gesture to heal the landscapes, a

with oil and ash on wood (p. 72); and four Antidote paintings

yantra (meditation diagram) with bindus (points or dots that are regarded

from 1997, including Antidote 1. Ciel Bergman: Before New

as sacred symbols of the cosmos). From 1995 till the spring of 1996,

Mexico / After California, Paintings and Drawings, 1980–1998 was

Bergman took an active role in helping to complete construction on the

accompanied by a bifold color brochure. 36 At this time Bergman

house, which her daughter, Bridgit, said the property and home were

was represented by Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco and

magical. In 1997 she stepped up her production, painting at least twelve

R. B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla, California.

large Antidote paintings, with images of shells, moons, and animal and

24

human body parts representing life, death, and transformation.

By 1999 Bergman and Fishback had separated. Bergman stayed

on Pedernal, and Fishback moved to Santa Fe, although they

Mother of All Antidotes (Genetrix Ominius) (1997–99; opposite)

remained closely connected. Over the years they had discussed

includes a still life of a heart, lung, and stomach perched on a

Bergman’s interest in recycling plastics. Plastic, like asphalt, is a

small table in the center. On each side are female figures. On

petroleum product, and Bergman theorized that discarded plastic

the left is a white carved goddess, and on the right is a woman

could be used to pave highways. She suggested that Fishback

painted primarily black with a wreath of roses around her head.

champion this idea and patented it under the name Plasphalt.

The women are not fully formed, and there is a swirling element

The plan was to take recycled plastics, which are heat-absorbing

hovering over the table between them, which seems to imply

materials, and then add them to asphalt to displace the petroleum

that they are compartmentalized parts of the same person. 35 The

and hydrocarbon pollutants. Plastic, being impermeable, makes

Antidote paintings were created as healings for the planet and

the roads more resistant to rain, snow, or ice. It was more

ciel bergman. mother of all antidotes (genetrix ominius). 1997–99. oil on canvas, 72

x

90 in.

25

ciel bergman’s studio at cerro pedernal, new mexico, c. 1997.

26

expensive to make, although it would last much longer. In 2002

White Sands. In 2008 three of her large Antidote paintings from

Plasphalt was used to reinforce a segment of New Mexico’s I-25

2004—including Antidote 70 (Her Sanctuary), Antidote 66 (Her

between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Fishback and Bergman’s son,

Grief), and Antidote 72 (Her Pharmacy)—were included in the

Erik Bowers founded TEWA Technology, developing the project

group exhibition Place in Time: Contemporary Landscape at

and materials, diverting 27 percent of waste from the local landfill

Scripps College in Claremont, California, which also included

to the highway. Unfortunately, due to lack of support from the

work by the nature painters Karen Kitchel and Rita Robillard,

local and federal governments, the company went bankrupt. Their

among others. 38 Several of these large works from Bergman’s

invention had proven to be more resistant to heat and cold than

Antidote series, including Antidote 67 (Her Robes) (2004; p. 79),

control segments that did not employ Plasphalt. Documentation of

a transcendental work that Agnes Pelton would have appreciated,

the project has been archived at the Center for Art + Environment

and Antidote 61 (Her Rage) (2004; p. 80), had previously been

at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.37

exhibited at Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe in 2004.

The exhibition, titled Blood, Milk and Water: Ceil Bergman, was

At the end of 1999, a once-in-a-lifetime transition, Bergman painted

accompanied by a sixty-eight-page catalogue. 39

The Last Sunset of the 20th Century (p. 74), a series of more than forty small oil paintings. New Mexico is known as the Land of Enchantment

In 2005 Bergman decided to sell her Cerro Pedernal home and

in part because of its colorful sunsets. At a time of widespread

studio. She moved into her friend Anna Livingston’s casita in Santa

anticipation of a Y2K digital meltdown, with all the anxieties that had

Fe, where she stayed for two years while her house was for sale.

built up around potential catastrophe, Bergman’s sunset series was

When it finally sold, she purchased a condominium and rented a

a way of saying farewell, letting go of a long-term relationship and

small industrial studio off the beaten track on Lena Street. Gary

heading into the unknown, a new millennium. She also continued to

Fishback, who had been her partner for almost thirty years, died

make paintings in her Antidote series (pp. 78–79)

two years later, in 2007. This was a painful loss for Bergman, even though they had been separated for six years at that point. Bergman

After Fishback moved out, Bergman made approximately twenty

had stayed by his side for as long as she could, though during her

large paintings in her home studio from 2000 through 2005. Dunes

final illness she would say that he was the love of her life.40 She

1 (2002; p. 75) was inspired by a visit to the White Sands National

subsequently traveled with her friend Dyanna Taylor to northern

Park in southern New Mexico, and Antidote 72 (Her Pharmacy) (p.

Arizona, where they visited James Turrell’s Roden Crater. Taylor,

83) depicting a large tree, nature’s medicine in flames was painted

a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker, was shooting

in 2004, the year of the Peppin Fire on El Capitan Mountain near

segments for her long-term project at the crater.

27

After her return from California, Bergman painted a series of six small panel paintings, titled Fire in the Garden. These dramatic plant portraits of white lilies with yellow and orange ribbons of streaming flames had an entirely new palette and feel (below and p. 84). She also painted several small paintings titled Fire Space. A large fire, known as the Trigo Fire, broke out in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico in April 2008. This—as well as Bergman’s personal need for rebirth, with fire envisioned as medicine—was probably the inspiration. She also made eight small landscape paintings in oil pastel on clay-coated rag that embodied memories of her time living on Pedernal. Bergman’s focus on climate intensified after her residency in California. She started a series of Climate Change paintings; the works had subtitles such as Sun Sliding, Echo Bow, Rock Fall, Sky Sweating, ciel bergman. california gyre.

28

2008.

acrylic on paper with ionized plastic, 8

x

No Dry Snow, Rim Collapse, and Sheltered Gap (pp. 86–88). Bergman

10 in.

painted thirteen works in

Following Fishback’s death, the artist worked hard to pick herself up

the series through 2009.

and focus on her career.41 In 2008 she had a prolific year, making

She made ten drawings in

more than thirty paintings. In March she drove to the Bay Area to

graphite on clay-coated

participate in a six-week residency at the Djerassi Foundation in

rag titled How Trees Feel

Woodside, approximately thirty miles from the California coast in

(pp. 89–90), which were

the Santa Cruz Mountains. There she painted a unique work titled

part of a larger series

California Gyre (above), in acrylic on paper with ionized plastic

including pastels on rag

granules. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world’s largest plastic

and paintings on canvas.

gyre, discovered in the early 1990s, sits halfway between Hawaii

And, the artist completed

and California. With this work Bergman expressed her continuing

nineteen small paintings

concern about plastics in the environment, a topic she had first

titled Gold Palette, which

addressed twenty years earlier. She also painted a series titled Talking

were numbered (see

in Gold, small works made with metallic gold paint.

opposite and p. 85).

ciel bergman. fire in the garden 6. 2007–08. oil on linen on panel, 21

x

17 in.

ciel bergman. gold palette 19. 2009. oil

on

canvas

on

panel,

17 1/4 in.

191/4

x

That year she met Edward Okun,

Cutler-Shaw, Agnes Denes, Chris Drury, Helen and Newton Harrison,

a retired retinal eye surgeon

Ichi Ikeda, Richard Misrach, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson,

seven years her senior who lived

and Alan Sonfist. This was an impressive roster of ecological artists for

in Tesuque. His wife, Bobby, had

Bergman to be aligned with. Three drawings from Bergman’s How Trees

died of cancer the year before.

Feel series (2010)—#11, #9, and #6 (pp. 89–90)—were presented,

Bergman and Okun enjoyed each

works that expressed her “empathy with trees and sorrow, as they are

other’s companionship, having

being uprooted and destroyed by the hand of man.”42 How Trees Feel

both lost long-term partners, and

#8 was also included in the exhibition In the Presence of Trees, a group

they shared a passion for art and

show at Ucross Art Gallery in Wyoming that summer. And How Trees

the medical profession. Bergman

Feel #2 was shown in an international invitational at the Timisoara Art

even stopped smoking after fifty

Museum in Romania, curated by Elisabeth Ochsenfeld.

years when they began dating— she was seventy-one. After a

Bergman made several giclee prints from previous paintings in limited

fairly quick courtship, they decided to sell Bergman’s condo. She also

editions in 2010–11, including one titled Her Surrender from 2003–4

gave up her Lena Street studio, and she and Okun together purchased a

(p. 30), and another powerful image titled Her Rage from 2004 (p.

large live/work warehouse studio on Calle Marie, off Richards Avenue

80). These two works revealed a consistent dynamic in Bergman’s

near Agua Fria. The studio was primarily Bergman’s, though Okun, who was a ceramist, painter, and photographer, had space there as well. He stayed over often but kept his primary home in Tesuque, where they also stayed.

In 2010, in her new studio, her largest yet, Bergman painted three small oils, all titled Empty Tree (Quiet), and worked on other series that she had previously started, including How Trees Feel. During the summer the artist took a second residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2011 her work was included in the exhibition Eco-Art at the Pori Museum in Finland, guest curated by John K. Grande and Peter Selz. The exhibition also included works by Brandon Ballengee, Joyce

installation view of ciel bergman’s series how trees feel at the eco-art exhibition at the pori museum in finland, 2011.

29

personal and creative life, operating between feelings of surrender and feelings of rage, extremes that women learn how to balance over their lifetimes. In 1998, when she attended the Rim Institute conference, Bergman had participated in a group healing session led

by Margret Carde, a landscape painter who worked with Bergman to direct her rage for good. She was always seeking a path of healing and wanted to empty her paintings of destructive forces. She sought to be as clear as possible so that her work could act as a medium for healing the environment.43

In 2012 Bergman made another Climate Change painting, Climate Change (With Stripes) including an American flag, placing blame on the U.S. for its environmental destruction. She made six medium-size paintings in oil on gessoed rag, all titled Plastic in Ocean (p. 92). And she finished a series of paintings titled Thermocline, visualizations of temperature changes in deep waters using oil on paper and on canvas.

Bergman continued with her paintings of trees, which she had started during her residency in Vermont in 2010. Altogether she painted approximately thirty works in 2012, including Dry Study 2 (p. 91), a meditation on the changes in weather patterns that fueled the largest fire in New Mexico’s history, the Whitewater–Baldy Complex Wildfire.

In 2013 Bergman painted Boogie Street 2, including an automatic weapon propped on blossoming flower petals (p. 93), a commentary on gun violence and the need to heal with nature. That same year she exhibited photographs and ephemera from her previous exhibition Sea ciel bergman. antidote 62 (her surrender). 2010. 22 of 2003–04 oil on canvas, 60

30

x

36 in.

x

15 in. giclee print

of Clouds What Can I Do at the Art + Environment Gallery of the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.44 She also began assembling a collection of

impacted waters in bottles for her Library of Waters project, something she was “asked” to manifest over thirty-five years ago. Her goal was to exhibit this library of the most sacred compound at the United Nations (opposite).45 The project was ongoing at the time of her death.

I will ask artists from around the planet to assist building this collection. Send me small samples of water (around 6 ounces) gathered from creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, inland seas and oceans. Only from wild natural bodies of water, make note of the source, its geographical location and collection date. With at least 100 water samples from every continent, we will display this collection of global waters in the United Nations. It will be a living, powerful visual impact, a time capsule from mid 21st Century on how the people of Earth cared for this Sacred Compound, so absolutely essential and so taken for granted.—Ciel Bergman46

ciel bergman. selection from her library of waters project, conceived in 1988 and begun in 2013.

and sealed with alizarin crimson encaustic wax so no evaporation can occur.”47 It was frightening to her how many toxic household fluids were as crystal clear as water.48 In 2014 the artist traveled to Clearmont, Wyoming, for a residency at the Ucross Foundation. There she began her Helios Study series, oil-on-panel pieces based on the ancient Greek god of the Sun. This was the year her partner, Edward, was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

Over the next two years he underwent two surgeries, and Bergman

spent time driving him to appointments with doctors in Albuquerque.

Bergman felt water was a common good, a resource that belonged to

She still managed to find time to paint, completing a large oil-on-

everyone, and that it shouldn’t be treated like a commodity. She was

canvas work titled Sound Below with Code Blue, which consisted

so concerned about water, especially living in drought-prone New

of fourteen smaller paintings placed on each side of a large canvas

Mexico, and formerly in California, that she anguished over using

representing each of the elements of the periodic table (pp. 94–95).

water to clean the oil paints and turpentine from her brushes. In a

She made an edition of ten giclee prints titled Lotus Vision from Mud

journal entry she stated, “Today put IT—all the toxic fluids I have here

Woman, working with Rush Creek Editions in Santa Fe, as well as

in the studio—filled with very clear reverse osmosis water corked

painting ten small watercolors that she dedicated to Louise Bourgeois,

31

Pedernal in Wind and Pedernal in Twilight, and Nighttime on Pedernal, once again reminiscing about the mountain she spiritually shared with O’Keeffe. In the spring of 2016 Bergman was contacted by the documentary filmmaker Sky Bergman (no relation to the artist), a former graduate student at UCSB. She invited the artist, her mentor, to be featured in her documentary Lives Well Lived. Bergman was one of forty adults over the age of seventy-five who were interviewed to share how they were living their lives to the fullest. Okun was also featured in the documentary, which premiered in 2017.49 In May 2016 Bergman was diagnosed with stage IIIA lung cancer. She also had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from her fifty years of smoking even though she had quit seven years earlier. Bergman’s final series was a dozen drawings of anatomical hearts that she completed in August 2016 (p. 33). During the more than ten years she had lived in Santa Fe, she had become close to a group of women who shared her interest in Buddhist meditation. Bergman referred fondly to this group as the Dharma Dolls. They would meet once a month at one of their homes and sit together, share a meal, and drink wine. The Dharma Dolls included Deborah Boldt, Nelly Goldberg, ciel bergman. for louise #3. 2014. watercolor on paper, 8

x

6 in.

Colleen Kelly, Ruth Sipora, Jo Sutherland, and Dyanna Taylor. Taylor had met Bergman in 2001, when she was filming the documentary

one with multiple breasts and several with female genitalia as well as

Thomas Berry: The Great Story, which included an excerpt from an

phallic imagery (above).

interview with Bergman. Bergman had met Berry in New York in 1993 during the Sacred in the Arts conference. Taylor recalled that she and

32

In 2015 Bergman continued working on her Helios series, making

Bergman hit it off immediately, being both from the San Francisco

another twenty paintings on panel, as well as several large ones

Bay Area. She described the artist as “a deep, caring friend who was

on canvas (pp. 96–103). She painted four landscapes, including

very passionate about women’s issues and the environment.”50 Other

women whom Bergman connected with in Santa Fe included Lisa Freedman, Phyliss Ideal, Dominique Mazeaud, Meridel Rubenstein, and Lucinda Young. Raya Goodwin also interviewed Bergman on her local radio show in Santa Fe titled “Juicy.”

Reading Thomas Berry is an absolute liberation. I didn’t really understand how deeply I was repressing my own truth and my own love of the natural world.

It was an antidote to my feeling of hopelessness, that nobody really cared except for environmentalists.

And here’s a theologian who cared. Who could link the spiritual with the natural, get culture [and] nature rejoined again. We have this very deadly illusion that we don’t need the natural world. And you and I, we can’t take our next breath without the natural world.—Ciel Bergman51 Bergman’s

lung

cancer,

which

was

aggressive,

eventually

metastasized to her brain. She was treated at the Cleveland Clinic in 2016 and later taken to Northern California, where she spent her last days under her daughter’s care. Ciel Bergman, aka Cheryl Bowers, passed away on January 15, 2017, in Pleasanton, California, at age seventy-eight. At the artist’s request, her ashes were spread on Mount Tamalpais, where her father would take her and her sister on hikes when they were young, as well as Cerro Pedernal in New Mexico, and in the Pacific Ocean.

ciel bergman. heart #3. 2014. pastel on black rag, 15

x

11 in.

33

magazine. In the spring of that year Bergman’s family organized a memorial event at the artist’s studio in Santa Fe, which her partner Edward Okun attended, as did former partner Bruce Heller. Artist friends came from all over to honor her.

Bergman’s daughter gave Taylor, who had stayed with and advocated for Bergman when she was undergoing treatment at the Cleveland Clinic, a wooden shrine that belonged to her mother, along with a box of spiritual rocks she collected over the years. Okun passed away two years later, in June 2019.

An exhibition of Bergman’s early largescale

unstretched

linens,

forty-eight

pieces, was presented at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Santa Fe, in January 2018. An eighty-page catalog was published with essays by the Los Angeles– based art critic Peter Frank and CCA staff curator Angie Rizzo.52 Sky Bergman made

34

installation view of bergman’s helios series as part of alcoves 16/17 at the new mexico museum of art,

a short film with early images of the artist,

february–march 2017. photo: nicole panter dailey.

which was featured near the entrance.

In February 2017, the New Mexico Museum of Art posthumously

The collectors William Dailey and Nicole Panter made the trip from

exhibited five of Bergman’s Helios paintings in its show Alcoves

Los Angeles to see the show, and many other friends and colleagues

16/17 #7, and one was featured on the cover of Pasatiempo

came to pay tribute to Bergman’s artistic contributions.

“You will be remembered by the tracks you leave behind.”—Ciel Bergman53

The artist came of age in a time when women had gained new freedoms. Feminism was the grounding of all of her work, and a spiritual life was essential to her own survival. Bergman was a product of the hippie movement, someone who wanted to change

Ciel Bergman was a confident painter with extraordinary technical

the world—to end war, to take care of the earth. She was also a

ability who took her responsibility as an arts educator seriously.

registered nurse with a background in science, however, she saw

Her students were highly influenced by her and would say that she

the world in terms of fragments that make up a larger whole.

took the necessary time with them. Her gallery dealer and confidant

She was charismatic, intelligent, and a deep thinker who sought

Kirk de Gooyer said that she was not comfortable with self-

to communicate so much more than she could ever paint in one

promotion or discussing financial dealings regarding her work

painting or in one lifetime. She was prolific for extended periods

and showed little concern about the art market. She would ask

of time, especially considering the scale at which she painted,

questions about buyers of her work, wanting to know if they were

producing more than 150 paintings that were at least 60 inches

environmentally aware.54

high and up to 180 inches wide. Her paintings communicated her worldview, one that was informed through the lens of beauty. Yet

Bergman believed that the heart and brain worked together as

her work was never without a grave sense of what could go wrong

one and that the interface between the psyche and the body’s

in the world, especially with a capitalist-driven economy.

immune system was directly affected by exposure to violence and ugliness. She learned from research conducted at the Institute of

Living in New Mexico allowed Bergman to confront herself, to go

Noetic Sciences in Northern California that the production of T

deeper into her core. Although her early paintings on unstretched

cells correlated with human behavior.55 Her focus on beauty was

linen are timeless and were impressive for a young artist, throughout

her way of creating work that was imbued with healing energy,

her painting career Bergman made individual works and series that

actions to mend the earth. She sought out Buddhism to clear her

carried forward an ecological consciousness which emanated from

mind, to be present in the natural world. She could visualize the

The Spiritual Guide Maps. Her series Linking, A through J; Bud and

invisible, the chemicals that permeate our environment, and still

Branch; Good Wild Sacred; Moons; Invisible Toxicity; How Trees Feel;

she painted beauty without resorting to cliché. It was as if she

Antidotes; The Last Sunsets; Fire in the Garden; Plastics in the Ocean;

took her gift, her ability to paint, and made it a tool for good, for

and Helios, along with her large-scale installation Sea of Clouds

healing herself and for sending a message to the world about the

What Can I Do, represent the oeuvre of a woman artist who sought

preciousness of life.

to heal herself through her art as a radical action to heal the earth.

35

“Not one dictionary have I found, engages any indication of a core link to moral, ethical, or natural beauty, nor to our deep psychospiritual need for the transformative power of beauty. All has been erased over time.”—Ciel Bergman56 NOTES Many details about Bergman’s paintings—including information regarding chronology, series, and medium—were included in the 2017 partial inventory of the Bergman estate, an unaudited PDF, provided by the artist’s daughter, Bridgit Koller. Epigraph: Ciel Bergman, artist’s statement, http:// www.cielbergman.com/new-page-3.

1. Angie Rizzo, “The Linens: A Foundation,” in The Linens: Paintings by Ciel Bergman, 1970–1977 (Santa Fe: Center for Contemporary Arts, 2018), 13.

The book was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same title presented at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe. 2. Dara Birnbaum, email correspondence with the author, July 18, 2020.

3. Kirk de Gooyer, interview with the author via video call, August 18, 2020.

4. Bridgit Koller, interview with the author via video call, June 19, 2020.

5. Reproduced in The Linens, 43.

6. Reproduced in The Linens, 50, 53, 57. Reproductions were also included in 1975 Biennial Exhibition (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975), unpaginated.

7. Ciel Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage to Beauty,” typescript of a lecture delivered at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York, October 8, 1993. Bergman Estate Archive.

8. James Wood, “Records of China,” Art Week 11, no. 42 (December 13, 1980) (review of the exhibition China Poems at Ruth S. Schaffner Gallery, Santa Barbara, fall 1980). Bergman Estate Archive.

9. George W. Neubert, in Fresh Paint: Fifteen California Painters, exh. brochure (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1982).

Bergman Estate Archive.

36

10. Charles Shere, in Cheryl Bowers (Los Angeles: Kirk de Gooyer Gallery, 1983), 7. The exhibition was on view from September 10 through October 15, 1983. Bergman Estate Archive.

11. Charles Shere, telephone interview with the author, August 18, 2020.

12. Rachel Rosenthal, “L.O.W. in Gaia: Chronicle of and Meditation on a 3-Week Vacation in the Mojave Desert, January 1986,” Performing Arts Journal 10, no. 3 (1987): 76–94.

13. Wikipedia, s.v. “Ciel Bergman,” last modified November 21, 2020, at 21:58, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciel_Bergman. See also the finding aid for the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, https:// www.nevadaart.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CAE1208-Finding-Aid. pdf.

14. Ciel Bergman, lecture for “Cultural Imperatives in the Ecological Age” panel, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, September 15, 1990, Bergman Estate Archive.

15. Barbara Rogers, telephone interview with the author, July 17, 2020.

16. Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (1973; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 220–21.

17. Suzi Gablik, telephone interview with the author, July 14, 2020.

18. Gilah Yelin Hirsch, email correspondence with the author, July 11–12, 2020.

19. Cheryl Bowers, quoted in Jerry A. Schefcik, An Issue of Water, exh. brochure (Las Vegas: Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1992), 6.

20. Gablik, telephone interview with the author, July 14, 2020; see also Gablik, Reenchantment of Art, 152–55.

21. Ciel Bergman, “The Library of Waters,” http://www.cielbergman.com/ new-page-2.

22. Hirsch, email correspondence with the author, July 11–12, 2020.

23. Beth Ames Swartz, telephone conversation with the author, November 23, 2020; Gilah Yelin Hirsch, email correspondence with the author, November 28, 2020.

24. Pamela Hammond, review of Ciel Bergman, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, California, Art News 88 (December 1989).

25. Fern Shaffer, text message to the author, November 20, 2020; Bergman, lecture for “Cultural Imperatives.”

26. Ciel Bergman, “Lecture on Beauty,” Pacifica Institute, San Francisco, June 1991, Bergman Estate Archive.

27. Ciel Bergman, quoted in Frank McEntire, Dreams and Shields: Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Art Center, 1992), 98.

28. Richard P. Christenson, “SLAC Delivers Timely Spiritual Message,” Deseret News, February 16, 1992, https://www.deseret.com/1992/2/16/18968176/ slac-delivers-timely-spiritual-message.

29. McEntire, Dreams and Shields, 97.

30. Ciel Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage to Beauty,” typescript of a lecture delivered at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York, October 8, 1993. See also the pamphlet for the three-day conference “The Sacred in the Arts: Transcending Contemporary Taboos; Reawakening to Beauty, Wonder, and Sacred Values through the Arts.” Bergman Estate Archive.

31. Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage.”

32. Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage.”

33. Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage.”

34. Rogers, telephone interview with the author, July 17, 2020.

35. See Blood, Milk and Water: Ciel Bergman (Santa Fe: Linda Durham Contemporary Art, 2004), 17.

36. Ciel Bergman: Before New Mexico / After California; Paintings and Drawings, 1980–1998, exh. brochure (Davis: Richard L. Nelson Gallery and the Fine Arts Collection, University of California, 1998). The exhibition was on view from November 8 through December 18, 1998. Bergman Estate Archive.

37. On the history of Plasphalt, see the finding aid at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, https://www.nevadaart.org/ wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CAE1208-Finding-Aid.pdf, and Wikipedia, s.v. “Ciel Bergman,” last modified November 21, 2020, at 21:58, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciel_Bergman. Also, according art historian Lucy Lippard’s 2014 book Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West (New York: The New Press, 2013), the product is still in use in road-building in China and India 38. Mary Davis MacNaughton, Place in Time: Contemporary Landscape (Claremont, CA: Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, 2008).

39. Blood, Milk and Water.

40. Koller, interview with the author via video call, June 19, 2020.

41. Rogers, telephone interview with the author, July 17, 2020.

42. John K. Grande et al., Eco-Art: Art and Nature (Pori, Finland: Pori Art Museum, 2012), 118–19.

43. Cassette tape with digitized recording of a healing session conducted

by Margret Carde at which Ciel Bergman discussed her rage against humans harming nature, RIM Institute, 1988. Bergman Estate Archive.

44. Ciel Bergman: Sea of Clouds What Can I Do, Art + Environment Gallery, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, September 8, 2012–January 6, 2013, https:// www.nevadaart.org/art/exhibitions/ciel-bergman-sea-of-clouds-what-can-ido/.

45. Bergman, “Library of Waters.”

46. Bergman, “Library of Waters.”

47. Ciel Bergman, journal entry, June 20, 2013, Bergman Estate Archive.

48. Koller, interview with the author via video call, June 19, 2020.

49. Sky Bergman, telephone conversation and email correspondence with the author, 2020. Lives Well Lived, the feature documentary produced and directed by Sky Bergman, was released on February 7, 2017.

50. Dyanna Taylor, telephone interview with the author, August 22, 2020.

51. Ciel Bergman, audio recording from footage included in the documentary Thomas Berry: The Great Story (2002), directed by Nancy Stetson and Penny Morell; courtesy of Dyanna Taylor.

52. See note 1 above.

53. The Linens: Paintings by Ciel Bergman, 1970–1977. Essays by Peter Frank, Angie Rizzo, and Peter Selz. Foreword by Stuart A. Ashman. Santa Fe: Center for Contemporary Arts, 2018.

54. de Gooyer, interview with the author via video call, August 18, 2020.

55. Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage.”

56. Bergman, “Notes on a Pilgrimage.”

37

ARTWORKS 1970 –2016

39

MAP OF EMPTINESS 1970 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 84 X 145 IN 40

SPIRITUAL GUIDE MAP HAVING REFERENCE TO THIRST 1973 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 52 X 52 IN 41

CACTUS AMERICA 1974 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 84 X 134 IN 42

THE WAVE 1975 ACRYLIC ON LINEN 84 X 139 IN 43

TRIBUTE TO SUBATOMIC MYSTERIES 1977 OIL ON CANVAS 66 X 84 IN 44

TOLE 1978 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 96 IN 45

MATCH 1978 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 96 IN 46

SCORE 1978 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 96 IN 47

GRAFFITI 1978 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 98 IN 48

TEMPLES AFTER THE PASSAGE OF EXISTENTIALISM 2 1981 OIL ON CANVAS 36 X 48 IN 49

SERENE HEALING GATE 1983 OIL ON CANVAS 69 X 108 IN 50

SEA OF WISDOM 1984 OIL ON CANVAS 80 X 120 IN 51

UNTITLED 617 1986 OIL ON CANVAS 48 x 72 IN 52

BUT NOW SHE IS LAID 1987 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 156 IN 53

TREES (LUNGS) 1987 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 80 IN 54

GILAH’S TREE 1987 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 80 IN 55

LINKING G 1988 OIL AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 16 X 30 IN 56

LINKING A 1988 OIL AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 13 1/2 X 29 IN 57

LINKING B 1988 OIL AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 13 X 29 IN 58

LINKING E 1988 OIL AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 14 X 40 IN 59

BRANCH STUDY (TRUNK AND WIND) 1988 OIL ON RAG PAPER 44 X 60 IN 60

BRANCH STUDY (RED BRANCH 3) 1988 OIL ON RAG PAPER 44 X 60 IN 61

GOOD WILD SACRED (A SINGLE FLOWER CAN LIVE IN THE OCEAN FOR CENTURIES) 1989 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 84 IN 62

GOOD WILD SACRED (INCUBATION OF WATERS) 1989 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 96 IN 63

INANNA ERESHKIGAL 1991 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 122 IN 64

RED 3 1992 OIL ON CANVAS 17 X 41 1/2 IN 65

RED 6 1993 OIL AND ASH ON WOOD 21 1/2 X 37 1/2 IN 66

ANTIDOTE PAINTING #1 (STONE AND DEER HOOF) 1994–97 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 90 IN 67

MOON 1 1994–95 OIL ON CANVAS 42 X 72 IN 68

MOON 2 1994–95 OIL AND WAX ON CANVAS 36 X 54 IN 69

MOON 4 1994–95 OIL AND WAX ON CANVAS 60 X 84 IN 70

MOON 5 (PACIFIC) 1994–95 OIL AND WAX ON CANVAS 36 X 56 IN 71

INVISIBLE TOXICITY 1 1995 OIL ON CANVAS 10 X 20 IN 72

INVISIBLE TOXICITY 4 1995 OIL ON CANVAS 10 X 20 IN 73

THE LAST SUNSET OF THE 20TH CENTURY 41 1999 OIL ON CANVAS 10 X 14 IN 74

DUNES 1 2002 OIL ON CANVAS 24 X 48 IN 75

ROSE MOON 2 2001 OIL ON CANVAS 12 X 24 IN 76

ROSE MOON 4 2001 OIL ON CANVAS 12 X 24 IN 77

ANTIDOTE 34 2001 OIL ON CANVAS 56 X 34 IN 78

ANTIDOTE 67 (HER ROBES) 2004 OIL ON CANVAS 60 X 84 IN 79

ANTIDOTE 61 (HER RAGE) 2004 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 108 IN

81

ANTIDOTE 72 (HER PHARMACY) 2004 OIL ON CANVAS 72 X 108 IN 82

FIRE IN THE GARDEN 1 2008 OIL ON LINEN ON CANVAS 12 X 24 IN 84

GOLD PALETTE 15 2009 OIL ON CANVAS 10 X 14 IN 85

CLIMATE CHANGE (RIM COLLAPSE) 2008 OIL ON CANVAS 24 X 48 IN 86

CLIMATE CHANGE (SHELTER GAP) 2008 OIL ON CANVAS 24 X 48 IN 87

CLIMATE CHANGE (NO DRY SNOW) 2008 [ABOVE] CLIMATE CHANGE (SKY SWEATING) 2009 [BELOW] EACH: OIL ON CANVAS 24 X 48 IN

88

HOW TREES FEEL 1 [LEFT] HOW TREES FEEL 8 [RIGHT] EACH: 2009 GRAPHITE ON CLAY COATED RAG 10 X 7 IN

89

HOW TREES FEEL 2 [LEFT] HOW TREES FEEL 5 [RIGHT] EACH: 2009 GRAPHITE ON CLAY COATED RAG 10 X 7 IN

90

DRY STUDY 2 2012 OIL ON CANVAS 8 X 16 IN 91

PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN 4 [LEFT] PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN 5 [RIGHT] EACH: 2012 OIL ON CANVAS 30 X 22 IN

92

BOOGIE STREET 2 2013 OIL ON CANVAS 78 X 144 IN 93

CODE BLUE 82 LEAD 2014 SMALL PANEL FROM LARGER INSTALLATION (SEE OPPOSITE) OIL ON CANVAS 9 X 12 IN 94

CODE BLUE SOUND BELOW 2014 INSTALLATION VIEW OIL ON MULTIPLE CANVAS DIMENSIONS VARIABLE CENTRAL IMAGE: 66 X 108 INCHES 95

HELIOS (SHAKTI) 2014 OIL ON PANEL 66 X 108 IN 97

HELIOS (AKBAR) 2014 OIL ON PANEL 36 X 58 INCHES 98

HELIOS (DARK WITH LOVE) 2015 OIL ON CANVAS ON PANEL 36 X 58 INCHES 99

HELIOS (CLOSER TO THE TRUTH OF LIES WE ARE LIVING) 2015 OIL ON CANVAS 48 X 96 IN 100

HELIOS (SHRINK AS WE DESTROY THE DIVINE) 2015 OIL ON CANVAS 36 X 36 IN 101

HELIOS (DUMPING ANIMAL BLOOD INTO THE SEA) 2016 OIL ON CANVAS 36 X 36 IN 102

HELIOS (THROWING STONES INTO THE BLACK) 2015 OIL ON CANVAS 36 X 36 IN 103

CIEL BERGMAN 1938–2017

EDUCATION 1973 BA/MFA, Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, with honors 1959 RN, Psychiatry, Santa Rosa School of Nursing, CA SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2018 The Linens: Paintings by Ciel Bergman, 1970–1977, Center

for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe 2012 Archives of Plasphalt, Reno, Nevada 2004 Blood, Milk and Water, Linda Durham Contemporary Art,

Santa Fe 2000 Antidotes, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Santa Fe 104

1998 Before New Mexico/After California: Paintings & Drawings, 1980–1998. Richard L. Nelson Gallery, UC Davis, CA (brochure) 1990 Good Wild Sacred, Jaffe Baker Gallery, Boca Raton, FL 1989 Good Wild Sacred, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Los Angeles, 1987 Sea Of Clouds What Can I Do, Santa Barbara Contemporary

Art Forum, CA 1983 Red Gate, Kirk de Gooyer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1981 Trial for Passage, Kirk de Gooyer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1980 Graffiti, Hyde Art Gallery, Grossmont College, El Cajon, CA 1979 The China Poems, Ruth Schaffner Gallery, Santa Barbara,

CA; Patricia Hamilton Gallery Contemporary Art, New York 1977 Black Tool Paintings, University of Oregon Art Museum, Eugene 1975 Society for the Encouragement of the Creative Arts

(S.E.C.A.) Award, San Francisco Museum of Art 1973 Spiritual Guide Maps, Malvina Miller Gallery, San Francisco 1968 Mendocino Windows, Gallery West, Mendocino, CA SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2017 Alcoves 16/17 #7, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe 2012 Ciel Bergman: Sea of Clouds What Can I Do, Nevada

Museum of Art 2011 In the Presence of Trees, Ucross Foundation Gallery,

Claremont, WY

ECO-ART, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland, Guest curators

John K. Grande and Peter Selz (catalogue)

MNEOSYNING, Timisoara Art Museum, Romania. International

invitational of 100 artists who all make work about trees.

Curated by Elisabeth Ochensenfeld 2008 Place in Time, Contemporary Landscape, Ruth Chandler

Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA (cat.)

2002 Representing Landscape, UCSD Art Gallery, San Diego, CA 2001 Originals, New Mexico Women Artists, National Museum

of Women in the Arts, The Harwood Museum, September-

November, Taos, NM

1997

1993

1992

1991 1990

1989

1982

1976

1975

1974 1973

Women/Beyond Borders, traveling worldwide and featuring 200 women artists from 20 countries, Kenya National Museum, Gallery of Contemporary East African Art, Nairobi, Kenya; Extra Menial-Arte Modern, Toddy, Italy; Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden; UK. and in 2002 at University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA. The Sacred in the Arts, Synod Hall, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY An Issue of Water, Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (brochure) Dreams and Shields, Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art, Salt Lake Art Center, UT. Curated by Frank McEntire. (catalogue) Challenging Myths: Five Artists, Bakersfield Art Museum, CA Garbage Out Front: New Era of Public Design, Municipal Art Society, NY Revelations—The Transformative Impulse in Recent Art, Aspen Art Museum, CO Women’s Sensibilities, National Juried Exhibition, WARM Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (catalogue) Passages: A Survey of California Women Artists, 1945 to the Present; The Years of Passage: 1969–1975, Fresno Art Center and Museum, Fresno, CA Fresh Paint—15 California Artists, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Oakland ’76, Oakland Museum of California Art 18 Bay Area Artists, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art Three Bay Area Artists, University Art Museum, University of California, Riverside Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Bowers, Gonzales, Voulkos, Smith-Anderson Gallery, Palo Alto, CA Achenbach Invitational Drawing Show, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco MFA Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute Women from the Permanent Collection, University Art

1971 1969

Museum, Berkeley, CA National Drawing Competition, Juror Larry Rivers, NY KQED Competition, John Bolles Gallery, San Francisco, CA Invitational, Honors Award, Jack London Group Show, Oakland, CA

AWARDS & COMMISSIONS 2013 Artist Residency, Ucross Art Foundation, Claremont,

Wyoming, Spring 2013 2008 Artist Residency, The Djerassi Foundation, Spring 2008 1989 The Waterfall (commission), ceramic tile amphitheater at

Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara 1988 Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center 1980 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, painting 1975 S.E.C.A. Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA 1972 Tamarind Lithographic Institute Artists Fellowship,

Albuquerque, NM

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Achenbach Foundation, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley Contemporary Arts Society, London Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, New York National Gallery, Washington, DC New Mexico Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami Beach, FL San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 105

REVIEWS Suzi Gablik, “Mystery of Color,” Resurgence Magazine, September– October 2004.

Peter Selz, “Ciel Bergman at R.B. Stevenson Gallery,” Art in America, July 2003.

Robert L. Pincus, “Night and Day, Up Front,” San Diego Union Tribune, November 21, 2002.

Richard Tobin, “Ciel Bergman: Antidotes,” THE Magazine, June 2000.

Steven Jenkins, “Ciel Bergman: Before New Mexico/After California, Paintings and Drawings, 1980–1998,” Art Week, November 1998.

Diana Armitage, “Trees and Faces,” THE Magazine, March 1998.

Sandy Ballatore, “Interview with Ciel Bergman,” Crosswinds: Reconnecting Art, New Mexico’s News Monthly (Vol. 5, No. 10), September 1993.

Joan Crowder, “Installation of Trash: Disturbing Statement,” Santa Barbara News-Press, August 6, 1987.

Suzanne Muchnic, “The Sensuality of Judy Dater Amid The Charms of Santa Barbara,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1987.

Rosenthal, Rachel, “L.O.W. in Gaia: Chronicle of and Meditation on a 3-Week Vacation in the Mojave Desert, January 1986,” Performing Arts Journal 10, no. 3 (1987): 76–94. muse.jhu.edu/article/654881.

Robert L. Pinkus, “The Galleries, Downtown,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1983.

Thomas Albright, “Fresh Paint,” Art News, September 1982.

Suzan Boettger, “Fresh Paint, New Fingerprints,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1982.

Frank McEntire, “Sticks and Stones—The Artist as Shaman,” Catalyst Magazine, February 1992.

Cathy Curtis, “Fresh Paint, Questioning a Premise,” Art Week, July 17, 1982.

Richard P. Christensen, “SLAC Delivers Timely Spiritual Message,” Desert News: Salt Lake Center Newsletter, February 16, 1992.

Charles Shere, “Bowers Art Re-emerges with Seasoned Clarity,” Oakland Tribune, October 1982.

Betty Klausner, “Healing Through Beauty: The Art of Ciel Bergman,” The Independent, October 1, 1992, p. 37.

William Wilson, “Galleries, Downtown,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1981,

Joan Crowder, “Ciel Bergman, The Split Between Culture and Nature,” Santa Barbara News-Press, February 28, 1992.

Charles Shere, “New Cheryl Bowers’ Painting Ranks with California’s Best,” Oakland Tribune, April 1980.

Joyce Hanson, “Can Art Save the World?” The New City-Chicago Bi-Weekly, September 13, 1990.

Thomas Albright, “Three Artists Who Challenge Convention,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 1980.

Jeff Abell, “Cultural Imperatives in the Ecological Age,” New Art Examiner (Chicago), December 1990.

James Woods, “Records of China,” Art Week, December 13, 1980.

Pamela Hammond, “Ciel Bergman, Dorothy Goldeen,” Art News, December 1989.

Edward Goldman, “Art Talk: Dennis Leon and Ciel Bergman at Dorothy Goldeen Gallery,” Los Angeles radio program, 1989.

106

Mary Esbaugh Hayes, “Revelation in the Aspen Museum,” Aspen Times, July 13, 1989.

Charles Shere, “Cheryl Bowers Paints from Inside Out,” Oakland Tribune, Sunday, May 28, 1978, p. 3E. David Weinstein, “Seven Oakland Artists,” Art Week, June 1976.

Alfred Frankenstein, “Winners for Sure,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 1975.

Judith Dunham, “1975 S.E.C.A. Exhibit, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,” Art Week, August 1975.

Registry of Minnesota (WARM) Gallery, 1986.

Charles Shere, “Cheryl Bowers Paints with Knowing Vision,” Oakland Tribune, October 3, 1974.

Betty Klausner. X-Change, Celebrating Art Made Out of the Mainstream. Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Contemporary Forum, 1985.

Thomas Albright, “The Search for Mythology,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 5, 1974.

George W. Neubert. Fresh Paint—15 California Artists. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1982.

Robert Keil, “Cheryl Bowers: In Search of Centeredness,” Artweek, October 5, 1974.

Edward Leffingwell. 18 Bay Area Artists. Los Angeles: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1976.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUES The Linens: Paintings by Ciel Bergman, 1970–1977. Essays by Peter Frank, Angie Rizzo, and Peter Selz. Foreword by Stuart A. Ashman.

Santa Fe: Center for Contemporary Arts, 2018.

Blood, Milk and Water: Ciel Bergman. Essays by Suzi Gablik, Wendy Steiner, and Ciel Bergman. Santa Fe: Linda Durham Contemporary Art, 2004.

Irene Borger. In the Presence of Trees. Claremont, Wyoming: Ucross Foundation Art Gallery, 2011.

Nancy Doll. Women/Beyond Borders. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum, 1996.

Thomas H. Garver. Flora: Contemporary Artists and the World of Flower. Wausau, Wis.: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1995.

Jerry A. Schefcik. An Issue of Water. Las Vegas: Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1992.

Edward Leffingwell. Dreams and Shields, Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art. Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Art Center, 1992.

Heather S. Lineberry. Challenging Myths—Five Artists. Bakersfield, CA: Bakersfield Art Museum, 1991.

John Perreault. Revelations—The Transformative Impulse in Recent Art. Aspen, CO: Aspen Art Museum, 1989.

Tillie Olsen. Women’s Sensibilities. Minneapolis: Women’s Art

Mary Stofflet. Three Bay Area Artists. Riverside, CA: University of California Riverside, 1976 Suzanne Foley. 1975 S.E.C.A. Exhibit. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1975.

The Whitney Biennial. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975.

Interstices. San Jose: San Jose Museum of Art, 1975.

BOOKS Lucy R. Lippard. Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West. New York: The New Press, 2013. See p. 179.

John K. Grande, Esko Nummelin, Peter Selz, Pia Hovi-Assad. EcoArt: Art and Nature. Pori, Finland: Pori Art Museum, 2012. See pp.

118–19. Exhibition took place 2011.

Alison Gass, Tanya Zimbardo. Fifty Years of Bay Area Art, The SECA Awards. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2011. See p. 53.

Barbara Love, ed. Feminists Who Changed America 1963–1975.

Evanston: University of Illinois Press, 2006. P. 39.

Peter Selz. Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

107

Suzi Gablik. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. See pp. 152–55.

Henry Hopkins. California Painters. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1989.

Elinor Gaddon. The Once and Future Goddess, The Goddess Within: A Source of Empowerment for Women. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Sylvia Moore, ed. Yesterday and Tomorrow: California Women Artists. New York: Midmarch Press, 1989.

Thomas Albright. Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–1980.

Berkeley: University California Press, 1985. See p. 263.

SELECT LECTURES 1993 “Notes on a Pilgrimage to Beauty.” Keynote address at A Conference and Celebration, The Sacred in the Arts, Transcending Contemporary Taboos: Reawakening to Beauty, Wonder and Sacred Values Through the Arts, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York 1992 First public reading of “Ecological Degradation and the Cultural Repression of Beauty,” College Art Association, Chicago, IL. Panel was: “Cultural Imperatives in the Ecological Age.” “The Heart of Helping, Celebrating the Spirit” at Dreams and Shield, Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City Art Center, 1991 “Beauty Conferred.” Scottish Rite Auditorium, Pacifica Graduate Institute, San Francisco, CA. Other speakers included James Hillman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Suzi Gablik, Julian White.

“Sea of Clouds” at Artlink Symposium, Phoenix Community Alliance.

Also featured “Wasteland” by David Hanson, “Toward a Post-Columbian World” by Lucy Lippard, “The Reenchantment of Art” by Suzi Gablik.

1990 “Cultural Imperatives in the Ecological Age” at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; other speakers included Robert Janz, David Hanson, Mierle Ukeles, and Suzi Gablik; and at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, other speakers included Gablik, Othello Anderson, and David Hanson.

108

watts art publications