yolanda bergman

Artist Statement

YOLANDA BERGMAN – MOSAIC ARTIST
WWW.YOLANDABERGMAN.COM and https://www.ojaistudioartists.org – ybmosaics/IG





While growing up in Pelham, New York my mother was an artist and gourmet chef. My father was a famous writer and television producer. Our home was filled with every craft possible. The garage was a classic art studio with a kiln and a pot belly stove. My father had a photography lab in the basement and creativity was our holy grail. My mother painted, made ceramics, and we had the most amazing sewing room. All types of crafts and creativity surrounded our lives, and art was the focus for all four children.

After two years of college, I left and attended the Paier College of Art in New Hampton, Connecticut. I majored in Illustration and Art History. Like so many artists, it was the impressionist that I fell in love with.

As with many artists who are working and raising a family, art was a hobby until I retired in 2001 and took a local class in mosaics, and I was hooked. I researched all of the workshops online and began studying and traveling all over America and abroad taking endless workshops with the Masters, Mirrelle Swinnon, Yulia Hanansen, Katherine England, Donna Van Hooser, Kory Dollar, Mary White, and many more.

I took many workshops with Italian and Mexican Smalti but found my niche in Stained glass. I love making painterly, flowing mosaics out of something as rigid as glass. The flow, andamento, fitting, and color gradations are always challenging. You can’t just mix your colors as you would with paint.
I do not want to create a piece just with graphic squares and triangles with deep grout lines. I have to cut the glass in brush strokes to create fluidity, filling in each microscopic space with shards of glass. Then I mix tinted grouts to finally blend the pieces so there are no deep grout lines.
I love the variety of patterns and colors that I find in each sheet of glass. I utilize the veins and lines to create each piece to look like a painting. As one judge put it “a riot of colors”.

Today I have a home/studio in Encino, Ca, and a second home/studio in Ojai, Ca.

I am a member of The Ojai Valley Art Gallery, The Ojai Studio Artists, SAMA, and CMA2.