Bernette Rudolph - One of Our Founders
From Jonathan Blum:
I don't know how many of you knew Bernette Rudolph. She was one of the founding members of our artist group. I don't know the year (does anyone?) or the original name but it was a long time ago.
For those who knew her or her work, I have some sad news. Last month, Bernette died peacefully in her assisted living apartment in Battery Park City. She was remarkably healthy until the very end but she developed a cancer that put her on hospice for the last two weeks of her life. I visited her a week before she died and she was drawing on paper cups, telling funny stories, and being the inspiring person that she was.
I always think of Bernette as "an artist's artist" because she valued the process of making art above everything else. Her philosophy was simple. Create something every day, and that's what she did. Wood was her main medium throughout her long life. If you ever went to her apartment on 3rd Street between 6th and 7th Ave you would see every type of saw, long tables with boxes of tree branches, glue and varnishes, art everywhere, in every room. The NY Post in an article on her called Bernette "a grandma with a bandsaw."
May her memory be a blessing.
