Lisa Bergh: Sojourn

Working on paper is central to Lisa Bergh’s work but she has not bound herself to the common or predictable scale and pictorial orientation. Small framed arrangements, large irregular shapes, or hung from the ceiling and presented as screens, she explores paper as both an object and a substrate.

Bergh does not stick close to the center of either abstraction or representation, but instead hovers and crosses the dotted line between them with regularity. She may draw on exercises in formal composition common in paint and gesture, but the result separates from the expected because the subject of her study is often found in the everyday. She marries these everyday objects with formal language but the beauty, or even just insistence, of the daily thing wins out.

Lisa Bergh earned her BFA in printmaking from the University of Arizona and MFA in spatial arts from San Jose State University. In addition to her studio practice, she is the Co-founder of The Traveling Museum, works as an advocate for the rural arts and culture movement, and serves as the Executive Director for the Hutchinson Center for the Arts in Hutchinson, MN. She resides in the small community of New London, MN with her husband, painter Andrew Nordin and their two children.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website