More on Deborah Berger, the autistic knitter

After I uploaded my post on Deborah Berger, whose knitted pieces are on exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum, I regretted that I hadn't contacted the museum to see if they could have provided more information about her. I'm glad to say that AVAM answered my subsequent email and sent me three photos of her pieces, as well as a short biography, which I'll include below. (As far as I know, this will post will contain the only information about Berger—other than my first blog post—and the only pictures of her work, available right now on the Internet).

Biography:

Deborah Berger was born with autism in New Jersey in 1956. She attended residential schools for special-needs children in Pennsylvania and Texas, and graduated from Middlesex County Community College in New Jersey. Berger learned to knit while still a young child, and was soon a knitting prodigy. Before she was ten, she was able to create not only all her own clothing, but toys, games, and complex sculptural forms from yarn. As an adult, Berger was high-functioning enough to live on her own and keep an apartment in New Orleans, but she never held a regular job. She was often in trouble with the police for disruptive or inappropriate behavior in public. Most of her income came from her relatives, supplemented by work as a nude model for artists. A loner, she continued to knit throughout her life, developing an extensive wardrobe of colorful, idiosyncratic pieces in a style all her own, as well as a large collection of masks and mask designs drawn on paper. After Berger died in 2005, her family discovered that her living space was overflowing with her knitted work and began the process of disposing of it. A member of the Arts Council of New Orleans discovered much of it in a pile of trash and rescued it, saving it until a voudou historian helped her transfer it to the permanent collection of the American Visionary Art Museum. This is the first time Deborah Berger’s work has been presented in any museum.

Photos courtesy and Copyright, American Visionary Art Museum.

The nearly lost art of the autistic knitter

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore for the first time. The museum features "outsider" art—art made, primarily, by people without formal training but with an intense need to create something unique or beautiful or visionary.

There were many things I loved at the museum, especially: the mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic paintings of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, a baker who made paintings on his kitchen table after-hours (one of his paintings is shown above); the memoir paintings of Russian prince Andrew Romanoff, made entirely on shrinky dinks; and tiny paintings and sculptures selected from Richard McMahon's ongoing mini museum project.

But the exhibit that gave me the most pause was a block of bizarre crocheted pieces in the middle of the floor—a headpiece that looked like it was made for an alien, a striped, rainbow-colored coat, and more neutral-colored hats, all done with incredibly precise needlework. The plaque next to them said they were done by Deborah Berger, an autistic woman who was a knitting prodigy. Berger lived in New Orleans and worked as an artist's model by day, then came home and knitted nonstop for hours. After Berger died, her family threw out all her pieces, but someone from a New Orleans arts council rescued some of them.

Unlike the other artists I've described in this post, I cannot find a picture or even a description of Berger on the Internet. As far as I know, the most visible trace of her existence is on that block of wood in a museum in Baltimore. AVAM doesn't allow photos indoors, so I cannot show you what they look like (which is why Von Bruenchenhein's painting is shown above).

When she sat alone in her apartment, knitting furiously, was this her intention? Is a museum the ultimate destination, the best possible place for her work? Yes, probably, but still there's something a little lonely about it. One wishes that one of her subdued hats would grace the head of a distant cousin or great niece, that her family had wished to keep some part of Aunt Deborah's weird and wonderful art for themselves.

After I wrote this post, AVAM sent a short biography of Berger and photos of her work. See addendum post for September 17, 2010.