Cheryl Marie Bowers

Place: Berkeley

Born: 1938

Death: 2017

Biography:

Ciel Bergman, also known as Cheryl Marie Bowers, was an American painter of Swedish origin. She was born in Berkeley, California, in 1938, and died in Tesuque, New Mexico, in 2017. Bergman's work, considered post-modern, has a focus on the environment as well as feminine consciousness. She began her private study with portrait painters Peter Blos and Vincent Perez in the 1960s, while working as a Registered nurse in Obstetrics. She earned an MFA in Painting with Honours at the San Francisco Art Institute under Fred Martin in 1973, while attending Graduate Seminars at UC Berkeley with Robert Hudson and Peter Plagens. Bergman's work consists primarily of paintings, drawings, prints, photography, constructions and prose using the metaphors of the water, the rose and rose petals. Her paintings in the mid-1980s depicted aspects of goddess using symbols from the collective unconscious. In 1987, Bergman addressed the growing urgency of plastic recycling in the Sea of Clouds What Can I Do, presented at Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum. An immersive installation filled the entire gallery space with seven dumpsters full of non-biodegradable waste plastic garbage gathered from four miles of Santa Barbara's Pacific Ocean coastline over the course of three or four months. The installation included painted wall murals, sound, a video written and shot by the artist, photography, a meditation circle, writing, and a prayer sticks altar with interactive participation of visitors to the exhibition. The installation resembled a post-nuclear ash site: floors were littered with sprawling piles of plastic which hung from the ceiling, sprinkled with flour. After the exhibition closed, six dumpsters were needed to haul away the refuse.