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Yolanda Bergman

Mosaic Artist

Mosaic

Other

https://www.yolandabergman.com

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ARTIST STATEMENT

While growing up in Pelham, New York my mother was an artist and gourmet chef. My father was a famous writer and television producer. Just one of his credits is that he was the head writer for Johnny Carson for five years and, man, my father was FUNNY!

Our home was filled with arts and crafts everywhere.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.

After two years of college, I left and attended the Paier College of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. I majored in Illustration and art history. Life went on and I got married and had a five-month-old baby girl, when I got hired as one of the original instructors for Jane Fonda’s Workout. This led me to a career in health, nutrition, and fitness. I was labeled “the diet guru to the stars” by People magazine and had a 25-year successful career in the diet and health industry. I was most well-known for fighting the food industry’s false labeling and chemical ingredients. I wrote two bestselling books for Bantam Doubleday Dell, “Food Cop” and “Diet 911” and became a spokesperson, television personality, and health-based entrepreneur.

As with many artists who are working and raising a family, art was on the backburner. I retired in 2010 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, 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 fill in each tiny gap with the tiniest of shards, then tint my grout to finally blend it all together. I call it “Art of a thousand cuts”.

Today I have a home in Mandeville Canyon, Brentwood, and a second home here in Ojai. I have studios in both homes.

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

VIEW THIS ARTIST'S WORKS

My Friend Flicka

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Red Eyed Tree Frog at Lunch

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Fox caught in the Headlights

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A Riot of Colors! Tulips in Spring

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A Blue Bird in A Red Aloe

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Audrey Hepburn Blowing a Bubble

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Blood Oranges - Lazy Susan

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Wild Parrots of Los Angeles

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Moonlight int the Garden

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White Peony in a Deep Blue Sky

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Portrait of Gracen - 8 years old

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Cat portrait

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The Wild Parrots of Los Angeles

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Sadie

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Sunflowers in Full Bloom

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VIEW THIS ARTIST'S POSTS

Yolanda and the Camel - Portrait ofAlbert - Rancho Grande's Resident Camel

Sometimes making a piece of art can lead you to an amazing adventure. Such is the case of doing a portrait of Albert, the resident camel at Rancho Grande in Ojai. If you do not know about this magicl ranch you must check it out on Facebook or online. I stayed at the ranch and fell in love with every single animal there. However the star of the ranch is Albert the camel. He is absolutely a sweetheart and thinks he is a human. He swings by every morning, sticking his head in the door for apples and carrots. He sits with the goats and llamas, and hikes with the horses. He would come into the cabin entirely excet for his hump! I told Linda and Richard (owners,see below) that I wanted to do his portrait, and they agreed. Well it came out better than I ever thought and when Albert saw it he gave me a huge camel ( sloppy) kiss on my cheek and chewed my ear. What more could I ask for? It was a unique experience and I am so grateful for this opportunity. See below: Rancho Grande is a family-owned, family-operated guest ranch in the mountains above Ojai. Richard and Linda Murad host the ranch with their children, Alex, Shelly and Jack. Richard is the former CEO of Murad Skincare and the owner of Beach City Baseball Academy, an El Segundo baseball school known for its competitive travel teams. Richard, Linda and Alex live full-time at Rancho Grande and welcome guests into the place they call home. Rancho Grande is also an animal sanctuary—a lifelong home for an extraordinary family of alpacas, goats, sheep, chickens, horses, parrots, pigs, dogs, cats, guinea pigs and Albert the camel. Many arrived after their former owners could no longer care for them. Here they live peacefully alongside the deer, birds and other wildlife of Los Padres National Forest. Our family funds their food, shelter and veterinary care and does not solicit donations.

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Audrey Hepburn - Commission

I got a commisson to do to a portrait of Audrey Hepburn Bubblegum Portrait. The artist who started this "fad" is Michael Moebius — a German pop artist born in 1968 in Pirna, East Germany. He's known for his hyperrealistic "Bubblegum" portrait series of celebrities and icons (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, David Bowie, Queen Elizabeth II, the Beatles, and more) caught mid-blow on a bubblegum bubble. He became internationally known for his photorealistic Bubblegum portraits of icons of popular culture. He was discovered by Hugh Hefner in 2000 and worked as an official Playboy illustrator before shifting into pop art, creating his first two Bubblegum portraits — of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn — in 2012. It is always very challening to translate a photo, especially a portrait, into a stained glass mosaic. However, I loved how this turned out using fake pearls for the necklace and earrings. It took me 4 months just to get the details right. If you look at the bubble, you can see how I just used once piece of glass that captured the whole bubble. Thats one reason I love using stained glass and incorporating the veins, textures, and flow of the glass.

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No AI Art Here - The real thing only!

Ojai Studio Artists Downtown Tour — July 11th You can see my works in progress and my unique technique for cutting stained glass and creating paintings. Mark your calendars for the Ojai Studio Artists (OSA) Downtown Tour, a free, self-guided art walk taking place Saturday, July 11th from 10am to 5pm in the heart of Ojai. This beloved annual event invites the public into the working studios and gallery spaces of fourteen accomplished local artists, offering an intimate look at the creative process behind a remarkably diverse range of media and styles. This year's lineup features myself and Dorte Bistrup, Kristen Clawson, Duane Dammeyer, Wrona Gall, Baghvati Khasla, Rex Kochel, Marie McKenzie, Tom Pazderka, Kim Smith, Linda Taylor, Katie Van Horne, and Fred Whitman. Together, their work spans stained glass mosaics, oil and atmospheric landscape painting, hand-thrown ceramics, richly adorned mixed-media figures, stone and limestone sculpture, layered fiber and textile pieces, and vivid narrative paintings drawing on art historical influences like Klimt. Visitors can expect to see everything from dramatic charcoal cloud studies and sweeping mountain valley landscapes to wood-fired stoneware vessels, elaborately costumed mixed-media figures dripping with beads and found objects, totemic carved stone columns nestled in greenery, and luminous, dreamlike mosaic florals rendered in stained glass. The tour is completely free and self-guided, meaning visitors can move through the participating studios and venues at their own pace, chat directly with the artists about their techniques and inspirations, and get a behind-the-scenes view rarely available outside of gallery openings. Maps showing all studio locations are available in advance to help plan the day's route through downtown Ojai. Whether you're a longtime collector, a curious first-time visitor, or simply looking for a creative way to spend a Saturday, the OSA Downtown Tour offers a rich cross-section of the talent that makes Ojai's art community so vibrant — all without an admission fee.

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Yolanda Bergman - gone quackers

After spending a weekend at Rancho Grande in Ojai, I came home wanting to get some ducks. Well, I have no room, so I made some anyway On the left, a fluffy gosling stands with downy, textured plumage in soft greys, taupe, and cream — its tessera cut in small, feathered pieces that beautifully mimic the wispy, not-quite-grown-in look of baby down. A pale watery background of blues and greys suggests a quiet pond, keeping the focus on the bird's tentative, wide-eyed expression. On the right, a mama duck takes center stage in a richer, more saturated palette of ochre, chestnut, and deep charcoal, its head turned to reveal a glossy dark eye and a vivid orange-red bill. The feathers are built with confident, sweeping tessera that follow the natural flow of the plumage, while a small shorebird wades in the lower corner, adding scale and narrative to the scene's soft blue water and shoreline.

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Yolanda Bergman - 100 Moments Contribution

Here is my little frog on a rock that I did for The One Hundred Moments Project for SAMA. My intent was to use as many different tessarae that I could in one small space. I used stained glass, fillati, fused glass, smalti and translucent grout. One of SAMA’s most impactful programs for members is returning for its seventh season this year as part of a multi-organizational collaborative celebration of contemporary art! For over 10 years, The One Hundred Moments Project has been a captivating, non-juried collection of work representing the full spectrum of SAMA’s diverse membership. This program has been featured at SAMA events in Chicago, Boston, Nashville, Greater Detroit, Kansas City, and Orlando. This year, it will return as a multimedia event featuring work by members of our Partners in the Arts, The Stained Glass Association of America, The Glass Art Society, and the International Society of Glass Bead Makers. For 2026, the rolling exhibit will travel to Corning, New York, to be featured at the world-renowned Rakow Library at the Corning Museum of Glass, May 9 – June 7, 2026, and then onto a new annex of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the Pittsburgh Glass Corner Gallery, June 26 – September 25, 2026. The collection will be on view for over 5 Months and will be complemented by a renewal of the 100 Moments Online Gallery.

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Yolanda Bergman - Ode to Ojai in the Fall

This is my first landscape in Stained Glass mosaic. As every artist knows, perspective is challenging. I do love how the colors are just so alive in this piece. I want the viewer to be taken back to that moment in time when you are just gob-smacked by the scene you see. When your surroundings just make you stop and feel the power of the beauty in your bones. This what I love about Ojai. There is not a day that I am not swept up in the world around me here. I can breathe it, feel it, soak it up, and it is joy.

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Yolanda Bergman - Exploring sepia tones

I have been looking at Bespoke Vintage Wallpapers and Murals. I love the deep tones and subtle muted tones. I tried to capture this in my latests piece. The blues and lavenders in the flowers with deep emerald tones of the leaves. Then, just a pop of yellow/orange to make the centers of the flowers stand out. I hope you like it.

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From One Artist to Another

I went to Karen K Lewis's studio last year ( huge fan) and saw a painting she did of pumkins and gourds. I stared at it and realized that I have all of this mottled and rippled glass at home. I asked her permission to do a mosiac of the piece, and she kindly agreed. Well it has taken almost a year and finally I have finished it. It is 2x3 feet and I love it. It is chunky, ripply, mottled, and vibrant! Thanks Karen!

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Yolanda Bergman

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