Babette Herschberger
PARACHUTE GALLERY CORE ARTIST
Babette Herschberger · St. Petersburg, FL
Babette Herschberger completed an AS in graphic design with honors at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She then developed a studio practice as a painter and collage artist. Intrigued with how structures in the built environment contrast with the natural world, Hershberger works intuitively to create minimal, abstract compositions that emphasize color, form, and surface. Considering her collage process as a way of drawing within painting, Hershberger’s works often incorporate informal and banal materials, such as found cardboard and product packaging, which she transforms through boldly colored planes and forms, generating works that suggest objects, structures, and landscapes. In 2015, she was an artist in residence at ArtCenter South Florida/Oolite Arts in Miami. In 2021, her work was included in the Skyway exhibition at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. Her work was published in New American Paintings, edition #112, and is in the collection of Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art + Design, as well as a number of corporate and private collections. Herschberger began a study in ceramics at The Morean Center for Clay after relocating to St. Petersburg from Miami in 2018.
ARTIST STATEMENT · 2D WORK
My approach to working is very intuitive; usually there are no sketches to work from and little predetermined choice of color. The result is the physical consequence of a dialog between myself and my materials while I am working.
I’m particularly intrigued by the contrast of manmade objects like signs, billboards, and architecture upon the natural world. These unnatural interruptions in the landscape become graphic mirrors of nature itself: street lights mimic trees; dwellings may as well be large boulders; neighborhoods and skyscrapers give rise to the elevation in a cityscape. I move through my everyday life preoccupied with viewing and photographing these juxtapositions.
The foundation of my current work begins with a deliberate paper collage, which ultimately acts as a drawing within the completed painting. These emerging drawings initiate the conversation I have with the work, which is resolved by purposefully minimizing composition while emphasizing color and surface. My works intend to suggest structures, objects and landscapes; they are a reflection of the visual compositions that I encounter in my daily life.
My Tidbit series is a study that utilizes informal materials such as found cardboard, product packaging, etc., where I again interpret the unnatural interruptions of the world around me. With a focus on minimal composition, process, surface, and color, I work to transform the banality of the original materials into a complex intersection of plane and form.
ARTIST STATEMENT · CERAMICS
As long as I can remember I have appreciated and collected the work of ceramic artists. After having formally studied and practiced graphic design for a decade, I began building contemporary primitive furniture which morphed into a full-time painting practice of 25 years.
Upon relocating from Miami to St. Petersburg in 2018, I discovered an extensive environment of ceramic studios and artists in the region. Just weeks after my relocation I began taking classes at the Morean Center for Clay and like many, I was smitten with the process and have earnestly continued my pursuit of this medium. It is the most challenging yet rewarding medium I have ever undertaken. I have a great love of industrial design and have focused almost entirely on functional ceramic work, making primarily drinking vessels that have a focus on form and color, each new piece or series is in itself a design challenge. They are small sculptures to me.
Working in this utilitarian direction for the last four years has afforded me the ability to teach myself how to hand build with clay and left me with the headspace I need to continue my painting process. It is my aim to bring both my painting practice and my clay practice into a more cohesive body of work.
www.babetteherschberger.com · @abstractbabz
[Updated September 2023]
Babette’s work:
