2011.03.26: March 26, 2011: Mongolia RPCV Jessica Moon Bernstein has exhibition, "Ourrubberos," at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
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2011.03.26: March 26, 2011: Mongolia RPCV Jessica Moon Bernstein has exhibition, "Ourrubberos," at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Mongolia RPCV Jessica Moon Bernstein has exhibition, "Ourrubberos," at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Bernstein says two years spent in Mongolia with the Peace Corps also informed and inspired the piece. At the time, the central Asian nation has just emerged from the clutches of Communism and had embraced the free market. There was little available to buy and when Bernstein returned to the United States, she was astonished by the offerings when she went to buy some ibuprofen. "There were so many selections. Some cheaper, some with more pills, some fast-acting, some long-lasting. It was overwhelming. I started to consider this glut of product on this planet and all the packaging involved," she says. But she returned to Mongolia every couple of years thereafter and was distressed to see the waste that the market economy had begun to generate. With no infrastructure to handle the garbage, the country has become littered with everything from animal bones to plastic packaging, she says. "It got too sad for me, finally, and I've not been able to go back," she says. The dual impressions of excess and waste led her to think about giving new life to human-made materials. The idea for "Ourrubberos," Bernstein says, is "to take something synthetic and bring it back to life."
Mongolia RPCV Jessica Moon Bernstein has exhibition, "Ourrubberos," at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Totally tubular: Artist filling BMOCA walls with bicycle inner tubes
By Alex Stein For the Camera
Posted: 03/26/2011 01:34:15 PM MDT
Caption: Artist Jessica Moon Bernstein with her exhibition, "Ourrubberos," at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. The piece is constructed entirely of bicycle inner tubes. Photo: Mark Leffingwell
The walls are, literally, covered with rubber. Pieces and strips of worn, mostly black bicycle inner tubes that spill around corners, across floors. The curious smell of rubber pervades the room, which has been all but consumed. Sound is muffled, swallowed.
And Boulder artist Jessica Moon Bernstein isn't even finished with her quirky installation, "Ourrubberos," in the upstairs gallery at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. She plans to continue adding rubber to the piece until the show ends in late June. In its current stage of development, it occupies about half of the space.
"We are thrilled with the idea of an installation that is not considered complete just because the exhibition has opened," says Petra Sertic, associate curator at BMOCA. Something about the media and work itself strike Sertic as organic, even alive: "You have a dark soft covering, undulating in biomorphic shapes, indicating that it might continue to grow."
It's an interesting choice of media, admits Bernstein 42. She happened upon it after she grew tired of painting and "making art to match people's couches." She took a three-year break, returning when she received a scholarship and residency at the Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass.
"During the residency, I was like a kid, again, experimenting and playing with materials. I found inner tubes there in a junk closet. I am a cyclist, so the tubes caught my eye. I began to collect more," she says. "Originally, I was stapling them to the walls, but soon I began incorporating panels of chicken wire, weaving the inner-tubes through the panels, like weaving a rug. My fantasy was to fill an entire room."
By June, that fantasy may well have come true. Bernstein's title is a play on the ancient image of Ouroboros, the serpent that eats its own tail. The piece is a kind of cyclical rebirth of the humble, utilitarian bike tire tube, which otherwise would wind up in a landfill or by the side of the road somewhere.
Bernstein says two years spent in Mongolia with the Peace Corps also informed and inspired the piece. At the time, the central Asian nation has just emerged from the clutches of Communism and had embraced the free market. There was little available to buy and when Bernstein returned to the United States, she was astonished by the offerings when she went to buy some ibuprofen.
"There were so many selections. Some cheaper, some with more pills, some fast-acting, some long-lasting. It was overwhelming. I started to consider this glut of product on this planet and all the packaging involved," she says.
But she returned to Mongolia every couple of years thereafter and was distressed to see the waste that the market economy had begun to generate. With no infrastructure to handle the garbage, the country has become littered with everything from animal bones to plastic packaging, she says.
"It got too sad for me, finally, and I've not been able to go back," she says.
The dual impressions of excess and waste led her to think about giving new life to human-made materials.
The idea for "Ourrubberos," Bernstein says, is "to take something synthetic and bring it back to life."
Bernstein, 42, was raised in Ohio by a Nicaraguan Arab mother and an Irish German Jewish father, she received a BA in International Affairs and Visual Arts and an Master's in bilingual and multicultural education from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She says she has been interested in art as long as she can remember. She studied art history and studio arts at the Instituto Internacional in Madrid, Spain before entering the Peace Corps.
"In second grade my art teacher selected one of my drawings for a nationally distributed calendar. It was an abstract. Not by intention, I don't think. Kids don't tend to understand abstraction, but a lot of their art looks abstract," she says.
Bernstein knows about kids and art: She is an art teacher at High Peaks Elementary School in Boulder. And, she says, many kids seem to share her fascination with society's detritus.
"Kids love trash. I bring them plastic lids, plastic bags, junk of all kinds. Whatever cannot be recycled. We make mosaics, sculptures, purses, finger puppets, bracelets, rings and whatever else the imagination can conjure and the material can sustain," she says. "Last year we gathered the bags that wrap newspapers, green, yellow, blue, orange, white, and hung them as wind socks on string outside the school."
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Headlines: March, 2011; Peace Corps Mongolia; Directory of Mongolia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Mongolia RPCVs; Art; Exhibits; Colorado
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Story Source: Daily Camera
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Mongolia; Art; Exhibits
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