"Wabi-Sabi"... Nothing Is Perfect

Beverly Bialik

Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM

Smarter Not Harder

Rough Edges

What Dreams Are Made Of

Beverly Bialik was born in the South Bronx at the end of World War II. She was raised by Yiddish-speaking parents highly suspicious of her artistic tendencies. She attended New York public schools and Hunter College, earning a BA in English. She taught public high school in Harlem, the Bronx, and Manhattan, participating in the civil rights movement and helping integrate the New York City public school system. She and her late husband, Barry, traveled the country for seven years, protesting the war in Vietnam while producing and directing anti-war documentaries and social commentary independently as well as for PBS’ “The American Dream Machine.” Their film, “White Grease,” took an award at the Lincoln Film Festival in 1970. Bialik moved to Los Angeles in 1975 and raised two children in Hollywood while teaching preschool and directing the nursery school at Temple Israel of Hollywood. She managed her daughter’s career from 1988-1994 and took up painting after her husband’s death in 2015. Bialik enjoys walking, being with her two grandsons and spending time in her art studio.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I started my painting journey late in my life as an attempt to tell the story of where I’ve been and where I am now. My work comes to me in a dreamlike state, fully formed in my mind’s eye. My paintings are stories, bringing images to life from my memory using acrylic, and sometimes collected fabric and photographs. I seek to present images wherever whimsy and memory might land, holding space for imagination to alter a reality that no longer brings forth joy. I hope to convey a sense of optimism by focusing attention on simple objects, using visual curiosity to attempt a physical representation of meditative consciousness. Inanimate objects pulsate and move with little spatial awareness and people no longer stand on solid ground, nor do they follow the conventional rules of gravity, as if to announce that perception is not always reality.