Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Constance Bergfors, Hard Rock Twist, 1989
walnut
95 x 12 x 7 in.

Constance Bergfors was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and was educated at Smith College, where she majored in zoology. While working as a medical illustrator she developed a love for drawing, which she pursued first at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and then at the Accademia di Bella Arte in Rome. The artist traveled and lived abroad in both Europe and Africa before returning to the United States in 1964. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Galeria Editalia, Rome, the Museo Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, and various East Coast galleries and museums in the United States. Berfors's initial flat canvases of floating color shapes gradually evolved into irregularly shaped relief paintings. Well after having become established as a painter, she took up carving, first in stone and then in wood. Despite the change in media, she continues to focus on abstract biomorphic forms as the subject of her work. Berfors's sculptural process consists of stripping logs of their outer bark and sapwood, carving the wood with a chainsaw, and then sanding and polishing it to achieve a smooth finish.