BERSTEIN, JESSICA

Statement
My work is a response to the effects of globalization on the natural environment and ethnic cultures. As globalization threatens to overwhelm the world via consumerism and environmental degradation, the question of how we preserve ethnic identities and natural environments has become a significant issue in my thoughts and artwork. During my travels around the world and time living in Mongolia, I have become increasingly aware of the conflicting relationship between nature and culture. The viral effects of globalization are rapidly destroying unique ethnic cultures and replacing them with homogenized consumer based cultures that expel vast amounts of unnecessary waste in our environments where it will remain for countless generations.

Recycling is a way of mitigating the disturbing amount of waste created by mass production and consumerism. Working with mass-produced discarded materials, I attempt to express the increasing impacts globalization has on us as well as our environment. I look to the way our natural landscapes are being altered as they are blanketed by our endless waste and through this, I work to create thought provoking and humorous sculptures from the heaps of discarded inner tubes, tires, and plastic bags I find.

Biography
Born in 1968, Jessica Moon Bernstein was raised in Ohio by a Nicaraguan Arab mother and an Irish German-Jew father. She earned BA degree in International Affairs and Visual Arts and an MA in 1995 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She also studied art history and studio arts at the Instituto Internacional in Madrid, Spain. Following her undergraduate degree she lived in Mongolia for three years, working for the Peace Corps and the United Nations Biodiversity Project. She has traveled extensively in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Jessica was an artist in residence at Anderson Ranch Art Center in 2007. Jessica’s work has been shown in Denver, Houston, Columbus, and San Francisco at Venues including the Biennial of the Americas in Denver, CO, Houston Art League, Ohio Craft Museum, the Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Longmont Museum. She currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.

Jessica has been in the Artnaut since 2014.
www.jessicamoonart.com