Artists weave together memories and encapsulate moments in upcoming show

The Dartmouth Cultural Center will explore the power of memory through art with its upcoming exhibition, “Fragments: Memories Reconstructed,” opening Friday, May 2 at 404 Elm Street. 

The show will run through June 7, with a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on opening night and an artist talk scheduled for Saturday, May 24 at 3 p.m.

Artists Dot Bergen and Paula Stebbins Becker collaborated closely to create this exhibit, which weaves together their individual explorations of how memories are formed, recalled and altered over time.

Bergen presents three distinct series. Her "Sculpted Memories" are three-dimensional pieces inspired by her childhood growing up along the coast and in the woodlands of New England. Each piece is made from a combination of fabric, clay and encaustic materials.

“That’s one of the ways that I love to go back and look at my memories,” she said.

Her second series, "Mental Time Travel," delves into the phenomenon of sensory-triggered memories. Bergen, an abstract artist, captures the intangible feeling of suddenly being transported to the past through layers of geometric shapes. Some works in this series contain as many as 50 layers, representing deep, complex memories alongside surface-level recollections.

Each piece, Bergen said, is meant to evoke the emotions that surface when a particular memory is triggered. 

One piece called “Family Circus” reflects the chaotic, joyful energy of growing up in a large family. Another, “The Long and Winding Road,” touches on quieter, more ambiguous memories buried deep in the mind.

Her final series, "Total Recall," uses fresco techniques, one of the oldest art forms, to examine how memories distort over time. Inspired by recent neurobiological research, Bergen explained that every time a memory is recalled, it is subtly altered, like making a copy of a copy. 

“The imperfections get louder,” she said. In this series, she began each piece the same way, only to end up with drastically different results, mirroring the natural evolution of memory.

Becker’s contribution to the show focuses on textiles and the passage of time. A textile designer for much of her career who now teaches at UMass Dartmouth, Becker reweaves vintage fabrics such as tea towels, trims and handwoven linens into new compositions, preserving fragments of the past within contemporary works. 

A portion of the pieces to be featured in the gallery were inspired by and paired with vintage photographs. 

Her method involves unraveling threads from antique cloths and weaving them into new textiles on her loom, making decisions based on the images. Some of her pieces incorporate visible holes, worn edges and unfinished hems from the original fabric, embracing the imperfections and history embedded within them.

“For me, it’s like a textile portrait of the people,” Becker said.

She highlighted a piece that was inspired by a photograph she found of two little boys rowing a boat and how it brought back memories of childhood, playing with toys and viewing the world through a lens of imagination. 

Another piece combines five textile pieces with a flowery design going across them, each piece representing her mom and siblings. A photograph of the young sisters is one of the few in color and will be paired with the piece.

Even before the project, memory was an important subject for Becker as her own mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in her 60s. “Experiencing that and really thinking a lot of how we form memories and then they unravel, and then how to reconnect memories again in our own way” has found its way into her work, she said.

The collaboration between the two artists began more than a year ago with a reading of the book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters” by Charan Ranganath.

"We kind of talked about that book throughout the year and took notes and highlighted the parts that really resonated with us,” Bergon said. “From there, we went and built the different series that we were going to work on.”

Despite initial uncertainties about how encaustic and fresco works might complement woven textiles, both artists are thrilled with the result. “How they’ve come together has even surprised me,” Bergen said. “We really enjoyed working together and I think that made all the difference.”

Gallery Director Jill Law said, "Versus just a single person show, I think that adding that little extra interest to it, it’s like having sprinkles on the ice cream cone.”