Bernadette DiPietro

LIKE THE SEASONS MY ARTISTIC INSPIRATION CHANGES

I look forward to the California spring when my chickens supply me with an abundance of eggs that I carefully gather from their nesting box to decorate. Using a tiny egg pump I carefully remove the contents and apply melted wax with a fine tool and liquid dye to create patterns that have a message. I am thankful to my relative for teaching me this heartfelt tradition as a young age.

During the heat of the summer I create collages from flyers, magazines, old books and handmade paper. As a veracious collector my eyes are always on the lookout for images, colors, textures and shapes that I combine to tell a story. The fascination with collage offers me the opportunity to deconstruct and reconstruct in a playful way.

Spreading out all my bits and pieces that I have collected for years fill my soul during the fall of the year. It is then that I create assemblages by combining odd fragments to build works of art. It was the artist Joseph Cornell's intricate, ornate boxes that lead me on this exciting and stimulating journey.

In winter you will find me traveling the world on a small ship teaching Creative Arts to the passengers. Throughout my travels I keep an eye out for laundry lines as I wander the back streets of foreign countries. In 1958 I won my first lime green, plastic camera and began photographing my mother hanging the wash of our large, extended Italian family. I still love looking through that small opening and creating visual arrangements. It is my pricture that I paint against the sky-an instinctive, moving sculpture inspired by my mother.