DAN BERGMAN

ARTIST BIO

I was born in 1938 in Chicago, grew up in Cleveland and went to Ohio State University. A satisfying career in the Macy’s Corporation culminated as Director of Stores in the Bamberger’s division. I have sketched compulsively all my life and assumed I would eventually “do something” with my art. I was happiest when I was working with tools and so realized my natural medium was sculpture. In 1988, with my wife Donna’s encouragement, (“I’m not going to listen to you when you’re seventy and whining that you never got to do what you really wanted!”), I retired and started to sculpt full time. I pieced together an

art education from New York’s Educational Alliance, (gas and arc welding,) The Art Students League, (anatomy, sculpting the figure and TIG welding,) and Urban Glass. I did residencies at Contemporary Artists’ Center in North Adams, Mass. (conceptual art,) School of Visual Arts, (public art) and the Seward Johnson Atelier, (iron casting).

Since leaving retailing I‘ve been a mature “emerging artist”. I’ve served on the Board of Control of The Art Students League and as president of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. I’ve had three one-man shows and been in countless group shows and exhibitions of public art. Outdoor pieces are owned by Xavier College in New Orleans and the City of Leonia, New Jersey. See more of my work on my website, danbergmansculpture.com and at sculpture.org, and I welcome visitors at my studio in Guttenberg, NJ.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I work in a variety of materials, primarily welded steel. Sizes range from small pedestal works to floor standing pieces to large outdoor installations.

My work falls into five randomly recurring preoccupations. One is a feeling that invisible forces lie behind and form the world as we see and feel it. I represent this force either by constructions that express gravity, or wind power or a balance of opposing forces like tension and compression. A second is a desire to visualize mathematical concepts that came so hard to me in school: graphing, projective geometry, vectors. Third is an obsession with doorways, openings or transitions between inside and outside. A fourth is a building or human figure presented as a sacred icon. And lastly, all the other random ideas that pop into my head, usually suggested by found materials.