Art & Cultural Events List

Maren Coniglione, Assistant Director
Phone: (617) 566­5715
Fax: (617) 738­8760
Email: maren@brooklineartscenter.com

Evelyn Berde’s Leaving the River at the Brookline Arts Center:

In Her New Series, a Brookline Artist Explores a Path Toward Healing

(Brookline – September 27, 2011) Well­known
Brookline artist Evelyn Berde has created a new
and very personal series of monumental paintings
and sculptures that document her childhood
struggles with illness and family loss. In Leaving
the River, which will be on view at the Brookline
Arts Center from October 15 to November 22,
2011, Berde meditates on her family’s pain and her
personal struggle with illness during her childhood
in Boston’s vanished West End.

A selection from Berde’s series will be on view in
the Brookline Arts Center gallery, giving Berde an
opportunity to share these richly evocative and very
personal constructions that evoke family,
neighborhood and childhood.

“These artworks are emblematic and symbolic portraits.
They have the grandeur and monumentality of a church altarpiece,” according to
Brookline Arts Center Executive Director Susan Navarre. “They chronicle Berde’s
transcendence of her childhood illness and pain through religious and artistic growth. They
are full of color and life, but don’t turn away from the suffering that life can bring.”

There will be a free reception with the artist on Saturday, October 15, 2011 from 2:00
to 5:00 p.m.

For many years, Berde worked as a child life therapist at Children’s Hospital Medical

Center of Boston. She has also taught art in the Malden Public Schools and at
Massachusetts College of Art, where she earned a B.S. in Art Education. Her work is
included in the collections of Children’s Hospital, Boston; Oregon Gallery of Art in
Portland, Oregon; Harvard University; and such private collectors as Leonard Nimoy
and Arthur Goldberg. Berde’s work has been featured in one­person exhibitions at the
West End Museum, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Perrin Gallery,
in Brookline. More information may be found on her website, http://evelynberde.com/
home.html .

The exhibit will be on view at the Brookline Arts Center, 86 Monmouth Street,
Brookline from 9:00am-4:30pm, Monday – Friday. Admission is free and open to the
public. For more information, call (617) 566­5715 or visit www.brooklineartscenter.com.