Artist of Faith
I interviewed Elizabeth Berg, an artist who I have known for years, but who I haven’t been in contact with for about 4 or 5 years. She attended the same church as my family and I when I was in my early teen years. I found it refreshing in a way to talk to someone like her. She is one of the gentlest, kindest, and most eloquent women I have ever met. I don’t think I have met anyone who can make anyone feel so welcomed or appreciated as her. She has worked in illustration, drawing, painting, sculpture, and has years of experience in the art world.
I really enjoyed her point of view and experience, and found it almost nourishing to talk to an artist who had such a deep love for their craft and their environment. When I first started our interview, I was on a couch and had my notes ready for her answers, but what I didn’t expect was for the first question to come from her. She asked me to describe to her what my artistic practice was. With almost no hesitation. Introductions, “Hi how are you?”, and then straight in. But after I answered she seemed much happier and willing to just talk. I have to admit I was little nervous; I had never done anything like this and, as I mentioned before, she was so eloquent I felt almost outclassed and rugged in how I approached the conversation.
Nevertheless, she was incredibly kind and I asked her my first question: “How does your faith influence your work?” When she was a child, faith meant more of a spiritual belief, without any specific ideological backing. She would more often than not be inspired by her environment or, as she recalled, visions that would come to her, sort of L’Engle angel style, rolling through the hills. The context of religious faith came later in her life, which feeds into her creative process to this day. She would experience feelings through music, which she described would take her to a sort of liminal space or location. She experienced these spaces as a mature adult rather than an inexperienced child, as in she would be shown the universe and the facets of life beyond her understanding. I really resonated with this, since I am very musical and I always feel transported whenever I listen to music, as I’m sure many artists do. Finally, she described her general life-long art practice as “Running the gamut between expressing a microcosm and revealing the macrocosm”.
Then came time for question number two: “How do your personal experiences mix with your faith in your creative process?” She believes that her experiences mix to create “one tapestry”, a life with little to no delineation between what she has experienced and her faith. “It’s been like that for a while,” she said. She describes art as expressing our myriad of emotions, and because of that anything anybody does is a form of expression and that “We are all expressionists”. For her, each work she creates is a journey of emotion. She also practices finding the extremes of a concept. She is constantly seeking out deeper and deeper meaning behind ideas or experiences she has. She made a piece that she described as “Distorted faces with words in the faces”. She said for her it a combination of expressing her emotions as well as pushing her concept into the grandest interpretation. She talked about how important it is for her to seek out the largest image of things, to “zoom out” so as to depict all of the facets of a given concept. She described it as taking her ideas “off planet”, taking them as far as they, or she, can go.
At this point, I was somewhat baffled by the complexity of her answers. She somehow answered beyond the scope of the question, and touched on things that I could never have expected. I went on to ask her my third question: “What is an important practice you have regarding your conceptualization?” She again mentioned her practice of working with an original understanding and seeking deeper and deeper interpretations until the full spectrum of the concept is revealed. But she also put a special emphasis on rhetoric and the communication between herself and thinkers like her. She talked about her practice of hosting sessions in her home for artists, writers, philosophers, thinkers in general in her community, and giving them a space where they could relax and express themselves in whatever way they saw fit. Personal relationship is expression, a form of expression, more expression, that is to say, expression that is more. She said that these times, where she could sit with an individual or a group and they could combine their experiences, were times that she felt particularly inspired.
(Side note here, this conversation was done over the phone. Talking on the phone is one of my pet peeves, since I feel like I can never say what I want and I always sort of forget how to speak English, ya know?) At this point in the conversation however, I thought of a question that I could ask that I hadn’t written down. A miracle! I asked Elizabeth, “It seems you appreciate a community environment, would you say that is an important part of your creative process?” She answered, saying that while she does value those interactions, she still considers herself a private person. She said that her seeking out those conversations is a part of her art practice, more so than an extroverted streak in her nature. She believes in the power of seeking out an expression or an idea and applying your own values to it to make it either your own, or to make sense of it within yourself. And to realize that within yourself, sometimes conversation is key. Another concept she would return to for actually most of the interview was the idea of being “filled with delight”. She said that it’s important to delight in everything you do. She delights in the potential for interpreting deeper and deeper, and she delights in diversity whether that be diverse thought or diverse people or diverse artistic application.
Again, I got really into the conversation and thought of another question on the fly. “Do you feel a certain obligation to people to invite them into this space of revelation and/or deeper understanding?”. Elizabeth felt that there was once a time in her life where she would daydream about coming into church and gathering up the congregation and revealing to them what she had discovered. But she said she had often felt diminished by the conservative nature of the church. She lamented that the church was suffering from the diminishment of expression. She believed that this schism between artists and church was due to modern church language. She was unable to accept the metanarrative that the church was providing her, so she allowed herself to explore outside the church. All of the potential of God, in all forms, not limited to any one aspect, was what she sought. She described her journey of seeking out all of the facets of God in whatever form they may take — Buddhism, Christianity, Etc. She said this and I found it so poignant, “His inclusiveness should be our inclusiveness”. She found that the church was so limiting in what it allowed in earthly form, that it was actually limiting the experiences they could have with God. She believes that she has a very strong intuition when it comes to understanding people and their experiences. Understanding people is art and expression, sharing insight is expression, and there is a certain catharsis that comes from seeking conversation with people, or seeking out the inclusiveness of God/the universe, and that this is similar to what she would experience when creating or making art. So while she didn’t necessarily feel an obligation to enlighten, she feels that losing churchy limitations through some kind of enlightening experience may be necessary for growth and a deeper understanding of God.
At this point I realized that the conversation felt complete and that my one question I had not asked felt out of place. I didn’t think that a more concrete question would be beneficial to the vibe of the interview. It is probably a good thing too, otherwise this post would have rambled on into oblivion, which I am already trying not to do. I also found that taking time to reflect is what enables me to understand the facets of the concepts that I explore. Even during and immediately after the interview I found myself sitting in a moment of silence just allowing what we said to permeate and bring out more questions or ideas that we could continue talking about. I found that a lot of what she said resonated with me, regardless of whether or not it was information that I directly asked for. I am grateful that she took the opportunity to chat with me, and it was invigorating listening to her unpack her very conceptual nature and describe her art practice in such a thoughtful, truthful, and exciting manner.
Here is a link to her bio on her website, and you can find her portfolio on the website, check out her other work:
