Beth Haber

Beth is a Hudson Valley artist whose work is concerned with issues of archive and transparency - exploring the intermediary space between descriptive observation and the imagination. Her process of assemblage is informed by language suggested in ‘The Talmud and the Internet’ by Jonathan Rosen - the “vast sea” of living tradition in dialogue with the world. As tales and texts come through the ether onto a flat screen, a smooth surface, resistant to touch, is becoming our archive. Working with mylar, an unarticulated plastic, Beth explores ways that its “flatness” may still be able to offer a different kind of depth. Beth’s work also embodies the notion of Gilgul (recycling): she considers the implications as archive moves from paper to plastic, recycling the traditional art genre of still life. As paint flows across this ground, only the residue of pigment remains; its path memorialized by trace elements, legacies of accumulation and attachment. Beth was a studio art major in college. After graduate school and some time to begin a family, her career thru-line has been as a working artist and designer, with side lines as an art writer and author of Drawing on the Bible: Biblical Women in Art, and a lecturer on art. A presenting artist at Vassar College, Beth is a recipient of the New York State Council of the Arts Award and is on the education staff at Dia:Beacon. Beth has had solo exhibitions at the Weil Gallery and the Goodman Gallery in NYC, The Goldman Gallery in Washington DC, and an installation at Brandeis University. Her work has been shown at Bard College, Vassar College, The Katonah Museum and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and is in museum, university and private collections including that of the Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres.