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About This Project
Excerpt from Idaho Fellowship Award 2006 taken from 49 Degrees Latitude:
“As a book artist, Bergren began CONTRACTIONS, an edition of 10 books containing 150 original paintings, in collaboration with Jann Marson, master bookbinder in Caldwell, to document her own response to 9/11 and the prospect of delivering a child “in a fragile time.” In 2002, she gave birth to her daughter, Finola. With diary entries and water media and collage paintings, she visually cataloged her emotions. Each section is divided into trimesters rather than chapters, and the end pages of each book are reproductions from her contraction charts and Finola’s heart rate recorded at the hospital. She says, “I made the books because I felt painting wasn’t democratic enough. Everyone understands a book. You flip the pages.” Bergren earned a BA in fine art, painting, and printmaking from Whitman College and an MFA from Vermont College. In 2001, she received a Juror’s Choice Award at the Boise Art Museum’s Idaho Triennial. Panelist: An exquisite tension exists between the formal binding and the looseness of the drawings.”
