Army sergeant's art in North Dakota museum auction
Alana Bergstrom may be an Army warrior but she's also an artist, one who says that painting helped release crippling anxiety she suffered during a 11-month deployment to a combat zone in Afghanistan starting in April 2011.
"I painted all the time," said Bergstrom, an Army sergeant who was named her battalion's Warrior of the Year in May 2011 in Mannheim, Germany. "It was what I did to keep me going. It kept me strong."
One of her paintings will be among the 52 art pieces offered for sale Oct. 20 at Autumn Art Auction at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. It is one of the paintings she made while she was deployed.
"It was a hot time as far as military action goes," Bergstrom said in her remarks about the painting published in the Autumn Art Auction catalog. "I saw a lot of action. There was an attack and at least one truck was hit. Mortar and shelling came from all around."
Bergstrom said whenever she returned safe from a mission, she would run just for the joy of having survived, of still having legs. She always carried a weapon. She even slept with one.
Still, her painting from that time is, in her own words, very bright and childlike. The colors wanted to be bright and alive, she said, the opposite of blood, dust and machines.
"Painting separated me from what happened," she wrote. "It provided the outlet that kept me sane. This painting tells that story."
About Autumn Art Auction
Not all of the 52 works to be sold Oct. 20 have such a dramatic back story, but almost all are the work of contemporary artists in North Dakota and beyond. The 15th annual Autumn Art Auction will begin at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 20 with the live auction starting at 8 p.m. with Ross Rolshoven as auctioneer. There will be live music by Jazz on Tap and wine and appetizers. Tickets are $30 for members and for non-members $35 in advance and $40 at the door.
Absentee bidding is possible by mail or telephone. Call (701) 777-4195 to order tickets, to receive an auction catalog or to register for absentee bidding. You can also view all the art works on line at www.ndmoa.com, or stop at North Dakota Museum of Art where they are currently on exhibit.
North Dakota Museum of Art had its first Autumn Art Auction in 1999, Museum Director Laurel Reuter said, to develop a buying audience for artists. The auction set the precedent for paying artists before the museum itself took any of the proceeds; the artists weren't asked to donate art, although some did. During the early years, prices for art often were close to wholesale, Reuter said, but the customer base grew, prices rose and artists continued to have their work in the auction.
About the artists
Each year the museum widens its pool of artists. This year's auction will have artwork by artists who have had recent solo shows: the Oakes Twins, Warren MacKenzie, Lena McGrath Welker, John Hitchcock, and Margaret Wall-Romana.
Bergstrom, a 2001 graduate of Grand Forks Red River High School, has had pieces in the museum's art auctions before. Her personal art history goes back to childhood, she said.
"When I played, I would set up things to look at and then take them apart and put them together again," she said.
Today an Army cadet at Johns Hopkins University and a student at Maryland Institute College of Arts in Baltimore, Bergstrom plans to earn her degree in 2014. She doesn't limit herself in her art. She doesn't start painting with a preconceived image, but rather works intuitively. She may have a general idea of what she wants to create, but never sticks to it strictly, she said.
"I paint on the ground. I paint on the wall," she said. "There's never an up or down while I'm creating. I think that's important to my work simply because there's never a top or a bottom. You can always switch them around."
Bergstrom survived the danger and stress of wartime, but she still wants her work to have a positive energy, she said.
"I think you have to give a good attitude," she said.
