By Louise Irvine
Beryl Brenner is an artist in Brooklyn, NY and she was an art therapist for the Veterans for 40 years. Initially, she was an arts and crafts director at Ft Hamilton Army Base but most of her career was at the VA Medical Center where she worked with Veterans of all ages, races, and religions, experiencing numerous kinds of disabilities and problems. They worked together in a wide variety of media but their favorite was glass art.
I Dream of Peace
At her fused glass classes, Beryl would look across a crowded room and see the Veterans completely at peace and engaged in their creative process. They produced personalized art pieces expressing their innermost thoughts in a serene and safe environment and learned something about themselves in the process. In 2017, Beryl asked the Veterans to visually conceptualize what peace would look like and they had a glass show and panel discussion at the Salmagundi Club, the oldest art club in NYC. In November that year, Brooklyn Public Library acquired a digital archive from the Veteran Affairs’ Creative Art Program and celebrated Beryl’s work in the lives of hundreds of veterans who participated in her Art Therapy program.
My Heart and I
When Beryl first began working with fused glass, she was experiencing turmoil in her personal life with family illnesses and deaths. Her son left home for college and she was struggling to juggle her job as an art therapist with creating her own art. She longed to develop her skills in glassmaking but faced many challenges. Fortunately, her experience as a therapist helped her to understand her own situation and she embarked on a project to explore the Heart as an autobiographical theme. Initially, she was dubious because she thought that hearts were the artistic territory of little girls. She could not have been more wrong. Exploring the subject of Hearts turned out to be far more complex than she could have imagined.
One Person, Many Hearts
As Beryl explains, “The series attempted to analyze the subject from a wide variety of perspectives. The truth is that we think with our heart as much as we think with our brain. After all, when we are in danger our heart pounds. We generally associate Hearts with love and most people long for love. Love can bring us great joy but love can bring us great pain as well. In addition, there are so many different kinds of love besides romantic love. There is the love of country, love for one’s children, love of knowledge, love of work, and self-love amongst others. Glass breaks…Hearts break…it’s all part of living. But the great thing about it all is that we somehow manage to survive because there will always be beautiful glass to admire and beautiful hearts for us to love!”
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Beryl Brenner @ WMODA
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Beryl Brenner working in the studio
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Heart Entering A World Where Things Are Almost Straight: We wish that things will make sense and be “normal” but too much “normal” is deadly boring so it is a good thing when things are a bit different. It is way more interesting.
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Heart Lighting Up: Our hearts light up when we feel good about things. When we accomplish things; when we receive the love that we crave, when we experience a special occasion, etc.
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The Mighty Heart with Blonde Hair: I was born blonde and was blond throughout my early childhood. Then my hair turned brown. I decided to dye it blonde so I could reconnect with “my authentic self” which is the person that I was in the beginning. I wanted to revisit that persona and learn from it. I found this to be very empowering.
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Heart Keeping It’s Distance From Evil Hearts: After years of trying to get along with a number of very negative, toxic people I realized that you cannot control others. You can only control your reaction to them and your own actions. Once I understood this a lot of things became much easier.
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Heart In Chains In Shattered World: When we go through profound rejections we feel shattered. This happens when we allow ourselves to feel close to people and we trust them. Furthermore, if there is no closure, we have a really hard time letting these feelings go. Our world feels shattered and our heart feels like it is in chains.
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Camouflaged Heart In Pieces: At some point we all lose our innocence. We are wounded and we are hurt by other people and by events in our life. We also learn to hide our hurt from the world because to show it makes us more vulnerable. It’s how we attempt to carry on and protect ourselves but It’s a lonely place to be.
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Heart Finding The Key: Heart finding the key is a very positive piece. It is how we survive. The piece instructs us not to give up but rather to search for solutions to our problems.
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Angry Heart Lashing Out: Women of my generation were raised to be pleasant and polite. The reality is that all human beings sometime get angry. While I would never suggest that walking around in a perennial state of anger is healthy there are times when people should get angry. Inevitably we encounter predators in life and it is necessary to protect ourselves so that it does not continue.
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Paranoid Heart with Hole: At times we feel that people are talking about us behind our backs. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it is simply our paranoia but it feels real. It leaves a hole in our heart.
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Heart Shining Brightly: We have to learn how to project our positive energy. In the major of cases that good energy will be returned to us.
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Heart Seeing Things Clearly: We often believe what we want to believe. We are confident that our perceptions are always the right ones. The reality is that they are often not. Understanding this can help us to see things more clearly.
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Relaxed Heart: Life forces us to work hard for survival. The great religions of the world instruct us that it is important to take a day off and just reflect and relax. Ironically, doing so enables us to have the energy that we need to do the work that we do.
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Jeweled Heart: Our hearts often possess jewels. We have the capacity to reach out to people who are suffering. We have the option to be kind to people who have less than us. We have the ability to respect people who are not as smart or rich or good looking as we are. In short, we have the chance to be good human beings.
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Heart Finding It’s Way Home: A person’s home can be their palace or their prison. I work very hard to make mine a calm, peaceful, beautiful home where there is love.
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Heart Using It’s Best Tools: Our hearts have so many fine tools at their disposal. Generosity, charity, kindness, empathy, understanding, compassion all makes for a good heart and in helping others we help ourselves to be the best that we can be.
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American Heart: I have always loved America. I have traveled to many places but my heart is always with America. I have traveled to all 50 states and each one is special in it’s own way. As the daughter of an American Veteran, I happily spent most of my life working with Veterans and the arts. I feel that I was the luckiest woman alive to be able to do so.
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Heart In Prison: When a person feels silenced, they feel like they are in prison. It is very frustrating not to be able to express yourself freely. We inevitably encounter people in our lives who try to make us feel this way. They can be very overbearing and we sometimes don’t have the courage to speak up. However, we should!!! They may disagree with us but we still should.
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Heart Teaching The Brothers Love Through Creativity: I had the honor and the privilege to work with American Veterans and the Arts for the bulk of my career. Many of my clients suffered because of their military experiences. A huge number of them were African Americans and they were new to the experience of producing and understanding the value of art. The arts afforded them a new avenue for profound self-expression unlike any other. I am delighted to say I arranged numerous art exhibitions for them over the years. This gave them great pride and joy.
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Heart Finding It’s Way Through A Maze: Life presents us all with unexpected challenges. There is nothing that we can do about it. We simply have to understand that is just part of living and to try to figure it all out.
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Heart Asserting It’s Individualism: I have absolutely no desire to be like everyone else. None whatsoever. It doesn’t challenge me at all and it is really boring. I have no problem being polite and sociable but I never want to abandon who I am just to be liked and accepted. It is too high a price to pay.