Below and previous
page: Hand-formed
solid and blown crystal
water bottles, 10-13
inches high, part of a
2008 collection Berger
created for Blackman
Cruz, arc inspired by
alchemy and baroque
still life paintings.
Opposite: Scripted
Crystal Chandelier,
of 28 blown pendants,
hand-etched with
i nterpreted text f rom
Leonardo da Vinci’s
sketchbook. Each chan-
delier is custom-made;
2-by-3-foot canopy.
from days gone by. A n oth er is etched w ith D a V in c i’s w ritin g
on w ater and h ow it flow s. “ T h e y ’re about a secret underneath,
a little story, a message in a b ottle,” B erger explains, picking up
another, cloudy-looking piece, “ and here, the idea that there’s
condensation on the glass.” W ait—that’s not real m oisture? T h is
reaction delights her. “ No! It’s solid form . I just finished the sur-
face in a w ay that m akes it look like it’s been taken out o f the
freezer. Isn’t that fu n ?”
Fun indeed, but Berger and her glassblowing team, w ith whom
she w orks in her hot shop d o w n to w n , labor long and hard to
achieve this subtle m agic. “ T h e truth about any art and design
is, it’s a discipline and you w ork at it every day,” she says. “ You
have an assignment and you have to crack the code o f it.” A strong
w ork ethic has been key to her success, along w ith instinct, initia-
tive and a right place/right tim e em brace o f opportunity.
Berger began her odyssey as a teenager in Dallas. “ So I ’m riding
my bike,” she recalls, “going dow n an alley, and I see som ething
through the fence and I ’m like, ‘W h a t’s going on here?’ I park my
bike and literally hoist m yself over the fence. A nd there are these
guys biotying glassy” D raw n to the fire, she learned the basics at
this little shop, then a few years later studied glass and architecture
at the Rhode IsTancRSchool o f D esign. T h e
r i s d
approach empha-
sized “ a collage o f resources, an intellectual understanding o f the
history o f art, and an academ ic understanding o f how to reinter-
pret it in your ow n language,” she says. “ I think the school shaped
me in the ability to question and be auto-critical. T o never really
be attached to the outcom e, but to be v e ry sure o f the process. It
w as never about, ‘T h is is the best thing I’ve made this year.’ It
w as more like, ‘keep going, keep going.’”
H er early career path, accordingly, w as “like skipping a stone.
I kept m oving, getting more inform ation.” Through
r i s d ,
she was
able to apprentice w ith such leading lights in glass as James C ar-
penter and D ale Chihuly. She w ent to N ew York to practice archi-
tectu re in the early 90s (a tim e w hen a handcraft elem ent w as
flourishing in interiors), and w as hired by the cutting-edge bou-
tique firm Bausm an-G ill. “ T h e y w ere v e ry generous, so I got
to design a lot.” For the W arner Brothers R ecords office in R ock-
efeller Center, she collaborated on an aw ard-w inning installation
that featured a large decorative screen in m etal, glass and w ood .
“ It had all these great m etaphors o f v ie w and sound and m usic,
and h ow you capture som ething ethereal—the physical-sense
experience o f time transitioning throughout the space o f the day,
and w hat the light does.” >
058 american craft feb/m aro9
