Catherine Berendsohn
Biography
I was born in Miami Florida and I have been an artist since my earliest childhood. I studied realism and was self- taught as a young girl, with my early focus being on drawing portraits and fantasy characters. In high school I began taking demanding art courses such as Advanced Placement Art Portfolio. I attended college at Florida State University where I earned my Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art Studio with a Minor in Creative Writing. I studied under Carrie Anne Baade and Mark Messersmith for figure drawing and painting. I also studied and developed works in sculpture and mold making. While at Florida State University I was a member of the collegiate Flying High Circus. I feel a deep connection to Florida history and this has been reflected in my work at some of Florida’s most significant historic sites, such as Mission San Luis de Appalachee in Tallahassee, and the Deering Estate at Cutler in South Florida. I feel motivated by the importance of that which we must preserve from the past and the crafting of a sustainable design for the world’s future. I worked as an intern for Sustainable Tallahassee and I have been an organizer for many campaigns on behalf of the environment. This perspective informs my art. The theme of my work is interconnectivity, which brings together my various mediums through writing, art, and performance.
I have been a leading artist for the historic homestead museum known as the Lichgate in Tallahassee, FL where I was the first artist in residence. I was the first artist ever given permission to create work that interacted directly with the ancient Oak tree that the park is known for. I explore my inner worlds in my expressions and the value and meaning of that which forms my world. I have fueled my passion by taking trips around the world and throughout America, visiting many of this land’s great National Parks. I have participated in many important cultural and world heritage events. I took an Artist Pilgrimage to Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada in the summer of 2013 after seeing the massive world sculptures and fire festival images in my Art Practices class years before in Art school. This greatly expanded my creative vision. I explore themes of personal expansion and multidisciplinary interaction in my work, through installations and group participation as well as mindfulness to the power of our connection to each other, nature, and the unknown.
Statement
I like to work in a range of media. I feel the creative process begins with an idea and goes through stages to become fully manifest. First is the idea in its highest frequency: thought. It is unformed, but given inception. From thought comes word, description creates a mental image, the thought grows by being shared. This leads to the vision in the physical, a two dimensional drawing, a physical window, a frozen snapshot encompassing the idea. From this comes action!
I revel in taking ideas to fully experienced life through enactments, video, acting, physical construction to be worn by the body, clothing and jewelry as a living canvas, engineered for practical movement in the three dimensional. I feel my greatest theme is inter-connectivity, disciplines that seem far reaching are in fact all linked. I feel this philosophy echoes my beliefs in the exploration of connection between my own inner worlds and the greater structure of the biological systems of nature. I see this as the Tree of Consciousness. By exploring Self I relate to the greater pattern. I often draw self portraits and portraits of nature as a reflection that All is still One.
EDUCATION
FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Currently enrolled: 2017-present
Second Bachelor’s Degree
Interdisciplinary Major
focus on Digital Art- Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Website Creation
Design
Film- Experimental Video Intermediate
Human Trafficking
Earning a Minor in Dance
Focus with Pioneer Winter of the Pioneer Winter Collective
Ballet, Modern Dance, Tap, Dance Composition
Pending courses in Maya Program and UX/UI Design
Performer with FIUnity- The Florida International University Gospel Choir
*Alto
MIAMI DADE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Educator’s Certificate
Temporary Instructor
July 2013- June 2018
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
Bachelor Degree
Studio Art Major, Minor in Creative Writing
Studio Art- Focus on 2D- figure drawing and painting
Focus on 3D- Sculpture in diverse media: Clay, Wire, Welding, Metal Pouring, Plaster, Mould Making
May 2010 - Cum Laude
WORK EXPERIENCE
Owner- Studio 11 Arts
Founded: October 2014
Creator of Studio 11 Arts- An emerging platform for film, performance, artwork, design services, and products that support social change for a more sustainable future and that generate support of social causes and the raising of awareness of social and environmental issues.
February 2014- 2015 Principal-Dr. Allison Harley 305.235.1360 x2233
Temporary Instructor for Miami-Dade County Public Schools Miami, FL
Duties involve maintaining a positive learning environment for students and teaching the curriculum for a variety of classes. Focus in theater, creative writing, art portfolio, and dance
June 2014- September 2014 Owner-Alan Masaoka (831) 659-4953
Marketing Designer and Sales Associate for Masaoka Glass Design, Carmel Valley, CA
Responsible for marketing and outreach to designers and architects on behalf of the gallery and documenter of studio process. Creator of the Masaoka Glass Design Website: www.masaokaglassdesign.com
April 2012-June 2013 Exhibit Specialist-Kim Yantis 305.794.5662
Recreation Specialist for the Deering Estate at Cutler Miami, FL
Exhibits and Special Collections Department- Assistant to the Exhibit Specialist and researcher and creator of the botanist exhibit of John Kunkel Small.
June 2010-January 2012 Visitor Services Manager-Janelle Willingham 850.245.6406
Living History Interpreter for Mission San Luis, Tallahassee, FL
Living history interpreter and performer with Spanish Golden Age Theater Troup- Theater with a Mission. Performances include going on tour for historical events and the Founding Day Annual Parade at St. Augustine. Performances featured across Florida with special appearances for the Department of State.
Special projects include the initiation of and participation in the creation of the Department of Cultural Affairs Exhibit featuring Florida artists such as Clyde Butcher for LEED certification of the Grove House Museum
April 2009-March 2010 Owner- Joe Sobodowski 850. 591.9600
Artistic Director and Photographer for Simply Artistic Gallery Tallahassee, FL
Planner of gallery displays, recruiter for visiting artists, director of photography sessions, photographer using a Canon EOS 50D digital camera, photography editor
July-August 2007
Artist for Tu Tu Tango Café Coconut Grove, FL
Painter of acrylics and oils to enhance the ambience of the restaurant
FILM AWARDS
April 17, 2018
Best Performance Award for the short film "Traffick" at the Florida International University Inaugural Panther Film Festival
EXHIBITS
New Media Festival- Art Basel 2018
Selected for International Show along-side artists such as Xavier Cortada to raise awareness about the importance of water and humanity’s climate impact.
Featured Film: “Living Waters”
An experimental video filmed at one of Western Florida’s historic natural sites, The Happehatchee Center. This piece is grounded in an earth based healing Ceremony for water and the environment, run from Alaska by White Eagle Medicine Woman as an international Ceremony. The themes connect the beauty of the natural site with the abused beauty of myself which has been used to overlook my humanity.
This work connects the abuse of women with the abuse of nature. The quiet pristine riverside location offers healing to myself juxtaposed with statements spoken about abuse as a breaking of silence. These statements can also be interpreted as a channeling of the pain of the natural living beings and ecosystems at the location and spanning out in the ongoing ecosystems planetwide that are all connected to the river, a reverberation of the silent pain of natural bodies that are destroyed carelessly because they cannot object for themselves to their human abusers. Parallelism of Feminine human abuse and “Mother Nature’s” abuse: exploitation, resource of the body, plundering of beauty, domination, desecration of Life, Sacredness, abuse of vulnerable and delicate life forms, shaming, dismissal, ignoring of the experience of the individual, of the different, harming because man can “get away with it”, a cultural “shutting down” instead of reverence for the Water, Water Bearers, Life Givers, Creation of Life, aspects of feeling, that which is unknown or mystical, the innocent and sensitive used as toy or tool regardless of harm and enforced by the acceptance of the entitled and privileged hierarchical group.
October 2017
Love the Everglades
Photography featured in an exhibit showing human impact on the Everglades in connection with the Walk for Future Generations, a Walk across the Everglades to protest the River of Grass Greenway that would further cut into the water flow cutting off the system and allowing access by oil companies for deeper extraction. The walk was lead by members of the Miccosukee Semanole people. This work was photographed on that journey, walking slowly instead of speeding by in cars, allowing a witnessing of the contrast of trash and consumption with the beauty of the natural environment. These items embody what was once wholistic matter reconfigured into harmful materials, thrown onto the natural landscape. They also speak of the return of all things to the Earth.
Opening March 27th, 2015
Creative Roots- An Exhibit Exploring Artistic Identity and Interconnection
Solo Show featuring photographs, oil painting, and a crystal interactive installation
October 2013
Outsider Gallery
Group Show featuring local talent. Pieces entered highlight use of India ink, acrylic, and pencil in a pattern of color families highlighting the portrayal of hands, home objects such as light bulbs, in studies of simple line and abstract form that create spatial depth and meaning.
May 2010
621 Gallery
Graduating Artist’s show, Chrysalis-
This piece featured a human container inspired by my experience in the Florida State Circus learning silk aerial arts. Created out of aerobic knit fabric in shades of pink and wine, the crossing of yards of these two colors are engineered with reinforced suspension to hang low to the ground. Access requiring self awareness to work inside or out of the opening created by a slit as a therapeutic re-birthing experience. An evocation of birth, womb, resting in a tent-like membrane state with light penetrating the fabric softly.
April 2009
For the Love of Our Mothers
First Installation on the historic oak tree at the Lichgate museum, temporal piece- Mother Nature portrait in wet clay. Clay, moss, grass
June 2008
Our Back Yard- An Installation to Raise Awareness of the Gulf Oil Spill
A sensory installation showcasing the clash of the Florida Gulf Oil Spill with the emblem of nature- the Tree of Life. Fabric, mixed media and found objects. Featuring the artwork of local elementary school students as creators of the stars and leaves hanging above the tree. Installation evoking an environment of vibrance and innocence in connection to nature, contrasted by a wild and stormy black nimbus of petroleum spilling from the ceiling and ballooning across the opposite corner of the exhibit space from the Tree. Oil spill represented by black garbage bags as petroleum based products dripping a slow moving cascade of glowing liquid in the darkened corner. Liquid created by mixture of water and found glow stick material, circulation by pump and tubing. Black light lit faces made of aluminum foil wrapped on the faces of volunteers and distorted into frowning and gapping expressions tumbling down the dark mass like a frozen wave.
The Tree of Life exhibit as a performance piece: constructed out of found objects collected from the home environment, this tree features a suggestion of the woman’s labial folds as a reference to birth where the performer inserts their face into the tree hollow created by a slit on the fabric center. The performer melds into the Tree of Life as a living metaphor of human emergence from the garden of “Mother Nature”.
Featuring song performances and a rune fortune reader as some of the performers in the role of the World Tree. Performances as interactions between tree and patrons, a “Spirit” as Nature’s emissary exhibiting different archetypes and representing diverse groups throughout the night.
SERVICE PROJECTS
March 2015
Community Center Mural in Little Haiti - Assisting Muralist to Artist Jerry Stecca
Painter of final details and lines for this community mural project
July 2014
Chalk Mural for LoKaL Restaurant in Carmel Valley, CA
Chalk art for renowned local restaurant
Art In Action- Florida State University Initiative 2009
Lee’s Grief and Counseling Center, Tallahassee, FL
Collaborative Project with Artist Elizabeth Gonzalez to create photographs and interactive boards for children in grief counseling.
The Gretchen Everhart School, Tallahassee, FL
Artists create portraits of students with mental disabilities to inspire a positive self-image
Breaking the Mold, Auction for Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Big Bend, Tallahassee, FL
A fundraiser for the after school mentor’s program. Hosting artists created a unique abstract form of a caregiver and child and gave them to a select number of Tallahassee artists to create one of a kind artworks for auction. Winner of the highest bid
EXPERIENCES AND AWARDS
2015
Artist at MANO Art Sudio in the Sunset Art District
Painter at the Mano Fine Art Studio
Artist Pilgrimage- Burning Man 2013
A pilgrimage to the west coast of the United States culminating in the art and fire festival of Burning Man, which is the creative Mecca of some of the world’s largest sculptures
2006
Silver Knight Honorable Mention and Studio Art Silver Knight Representative for Miami Palmetto Senior High School
