Inside the Studio

Laura Berman on Pacifica

A drying rack in Laura Berman's studio holding several color tests and prints from her Pacifica series.

The seed of this series began back in October 2024 when Laura was a visiting artist at the University of Hawai’i, Hilo. Here, Laura became inspired by the island itself as a place of continual becoming, where creation and erosion, force and fragility, coexist in elemental and striking balance.

A close-up of Laura Berman's hand inking a pink, orange, and green gradient over a relief plate.

A sunset over the ocean on Australia's Gold Coast in purple, pink, orange, and blue.

A close-up on one of Laura Berman's colorful relief prints depicting amorphous shapes interlocking.

A close-up of the texture of a tree truck depicting a similar motif found in Laura Berman's work.

Documenting the moments I found within this story was essential to my work there. These included incredible landscapes, a welcoming community, clear-air breezes, mixed-season flora, and colors from deep within the earth and sky.
Laura Berman

A close-up of Laura Berman's glass ink slab with an ink roller and some inked relief plates.

Several photographs of botanicals from Hawaii and Australia in Laura Berman's studio next to an ink slab with a palette knife and bright chartreuse ink.

A geological feature mimicking some of the compositional forms in Laura Berman's work.

A close-up of one of Laura Berman's prints on her studio table.

Months later while traveling in Australia under a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, she had the opportunity to explore the sunshine coast and created a set of small watercolor and gouache paintings that responded to the unique geologies and bologies she encountered which would later become transformed into the Pacifica series of relief prints.

An inked relief plate sitting on the press bed.

Two in-progress prints on the press bed.

An aerial view of a box with compartments filled with geodes and rocks.

Two water-worn rocks on the beach mimicking some of the forms in Laura Berman's work.

Natural rhythms, reflective skies, and deliberate forms encapsulated my time in Coolum Beach and the Mooloolaba Harbour area. Each moment of making the Pacifica prints echoes their content; the evolution of space, and how it is created by tiny movements exchanged from one form to another.
Laura Berman