3 Questions Digital Series

Megan Berner

An interview from Art in Embassies 3 Questions Digital Series with Megan Berner, who speaks about her creative process and artwork at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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Full Transcript

00:23
yeah so i’m a native nevadan
00:25
um and i think coming from this
00:28
place like the high desert is a really
00:31
big influence on my work
00:33
we are in a valley at the foothills of
00:36
the sierra nevada mountains
00:38
so we have mountains
00:41
to the west and then kind of the
00:45
eastern side of nevada opens up onto
00:47
desert high desert so we’re
00:48
fairly high elevation here um four
00:51
thousand five thousand feet
00:53
above sea level and the desert here
00:56
is sparse there’s lots of ranges
01:00
mountain ranges here
01:01
um and then sagebrush there’s actually a
01:04
lot of
01:05
flora and fauna that grow here but um a
01:07
lot of people who
01:08
come here from other greener places
01:11
think that it looks really really barren
01:13
i really like being from the desert um
01:16
i’m really drawn to these kind of
01:18
more desolate seeming
01:22
spaces because they’re
01:26
at least my experience in that
01:28
environment
01:29
is a bit of um it invites introspection
01:32
and so there’s a lot more
01:34
subtlety happening um you’re not
01:37
overwhelmed your senses are not
01:39
overwhelmed and so there’s more of an
01:40
internal
01:41
sort of experience there
01:48
my artwork is really environment based
01:51
it’s a process that starts with me
01:54
just interacting with the spaces that
01:56
i’m in
01:57
the blackrock desert is very close to
01:59
where i am
02:00
being in the environment i take
02:02
inspiration
02:03
from things that i see things that are
02:06
growing there
02:07
there’s this internal process that
02:09
happens so it’s almost more about the
02:11
psychological experience of space
02:14
and that perception there’s a piece in
02:17
the
02:17
exhibit from my mirage series
02:21
which is a double exposure um done with
02:23
a polaroid camera
02:25
so it’s instant film um double exposed
02:28
and it creates this layered image
02:30
that looks like a mirage and i was
02:33
really really interested in mirages
02:35
because
02:36
um they’re this optical phenomenon that
02:39
you can actually record
02:41
they exist but then sort of what you see
02:44
and perceive in your mind is is more
02:47
related to your
02:48
psychological state you know how you’re
02:51
feeling your mood things like that like
02:53
what you want to see
02:55
and i love that idea of this interaction
02:58
between the internal and the external
03:05
i like to layer things in my work
03:08
because i think it speaks to that idea
03:10
of
03:11
the the layering of the human perception
03:15
and the external environment and all
03:17
these different factors that sort of
03:19
come into one experience
03:21
so with the digital transfers those
03:23
start as a photograph
03:25
and then i put them into
03:28
photoshop or on the computer and
03:30
generally i edit them
03:32
a little bit so either cut out the sky
03:34
so that i have the
03:36
mountain ranges and things like that um
03:38
and then
03:39
take those forms on paper you can use
03:42
something like um
03:44
hand sanitizer actually so alcohol-based
03:46
something that will
03:47
transfer the image onto the paper i
03:50
really like that process it’s like using
03:52
um instant film because you don’t have
03:55
complete control over it
03:57
so your images start to sort of fall
03:59
apart
04:00
and you can’t predict how they’re going
04:02
to what the texture of the paper is
04:03
going to do
04:04
to the image so it changes it so it’s
04:06
not just this straight photograph
04:08
and some of that i think came from my
04:10
learning
04:11
traditional photography analog
04:14
photography prior to
04:15
everything moving into digital and
04:17
digital just felt like
04:19
there was so much control you didn’t
04:21
have room for some of these sort of
04:24
accidents with the material to sort of
04:26
do these surprise things so that’s part
04:28
of why i’m really drawn to those
04:29
multi-step
04:31
processes where the image sort of gets
04:33
manipulated
04:34
and then from there like i said i’ll
04:36
layer other things over like cyanotype
04:38
and things like that
05:05
you
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