Writer Oscar Wilde believed that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. For Madison artist Carol Chase Bjerke, it is the reverse.
When she appeared on the April 2000 cover of Wisconsin Woman, there was mention of Carol’s 1996 cancer diagnosis that resulted in her LIFEBOAT series, a sequence of images that roughly coincided with surgery and six months of chemotherapy and radiation.
Now Carol has created a new work titled Hidden Agenda — a large-scale, multi-faceted art project about living with an ostomy.
In late 2000, Carol received the diagnosis of a colorectal cancer recurrence. “The tumor was small, but because of its location and the previous surgery and tissue damage from radiation, the only recourse was to create an ostomy. This is a surgical reconfiguration of the
remaining intestine to create a stoma, or opening in the abdominal wall through which body waste passes,” she explains.
“From a medical point of view, I was spared once again from the cancer; all that was left was to heal from the surgery,” she says. “I was grateful for this, but not for the implication that living with ostomy was nothing to be reckoned with.”
In fact, living with an ostomy was so devastating that she was not able to create much art at first. “I journaled away, trying desperately to find a metaphor. But there didn’t seem to be anything appropriate — or polite enough — for speaking about all the excrement I was handling. This went on for two and a half years …”
“The breakthrough came in small stages as I began to notice some aesthetic qualities in the packing materials that came with my supplies,” Carol recalls. “With a change of outlook, theannoying piles of disposable supplies became art materials. At last the ideas were flowing
again … until I had a whole room full of artwork about what it is like to live with an ostomy.”
Carol set up the artwork in her studio and invited a few friends, fellow artists and healthcare workers to see it. “As we talked, it became obvious that the artwork was facilitating the conversations that had previously been unspeakable. I gradually gained confidence to
try to take Hidden Agenda to a larger audience.”
She accomplished that with a recent installation in a gallery at The International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. Beginning May 19, Madisonians can see Hidden Agenda in conjunction with Wisconsin Story Project “Cancer Stories” in the Playhouse Gallery at Overture Center for the Arts.
To learn more visit www.wisconsinstory.org/csp.html. Carol’s book, also titled Hidden Agenda, is available at www.borderlandbooks.net.
—Debra Illingworth Greenes

Originally published in the April 2000 issue of Wisconsin Woman.

Carol Chase Bjerke’s take on photographyss

By Debra Illingworth Greene

Carol Chase Bjerke doesn’t take photos – she makes them.

“A common reaction that I get is ‘You’re not really a photographer. You’re an artist,’ People have a pretty set idea of what a photograph is,” Bjerke explains. “I guess I think of myself as an artist who uses photography as a way to express my experience.”

Bjerke’s Madison home, which serves as a gallery of her work, is filled with her unusual work. Don’t expect to see your typical portraits and landscapes. Her photographs are torn, hand-colored, used in collage or altered in some other way. They may be displayed in hand-made books or even in transparent plastic sleeves sewn together into a life vest. Some are taken through windows, so that reflections produce layers of images.

The landscapes she has photographed – many of the prairie in the U.W. Arboretum – were taken with a disposable panoramic camera, or a Diana camera, which makes square images and was popular several decades ago as a carnival prize. Bjerke says these cameras are “so crude, but you really have to be seeing what is there.” The result is a look that’s almost other-worldly.

Photography is Bjerke’s life work. She started with a Girl Scout camera as a child. “I have a very vivid memory of looking through the viewfinder and composing photos at 8, 9 and 10. I remember images from summer camp.”

In high school Bjerke worked in a camera store, but was exploring other art mediums – drawing and some painting. She went to college to study history, but left to get married and start a family. When her children were close to school-age, Bjerke went back to school and took art classes, eventually getting a graphic arts degree.

After school, “I freelanced a little but I never really worked in the field, although I did enough to know that it wasn’t where I wanted to be,” she says. “At that time ‘talent’ meant you did something you’d seen.”

“It was a difficult time for me because my marriage was breaking up. Then I met Lee and a relationship grew,” she says of her husband, now a retired chemist. “He had bought a farm that was a great place to work. He was very generous in his support and has been a huge factor in my being able to do what I want. It’s a real luxury. Because I don’t need to worry about putting food on the table, I can choose what I want to do.”

As Bjerke began to pursue her love of photography, she took a number of workshops and learned the technical side of the art. She also connected with the arts council in a small town near her Michigan farm. She and a friend rented a studio from another friend and they ran a tiny gallery with some success. After two or three years, they closed the gallery and studio and Bjerke went back to school. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Central Michigan University in 1988.

Then it was time to move on. “We had been on the farm for 12 years,” Bjerke explains. “I had had enough and was wanting to get into a city environment.” A career move for her husband brought the couple to Madison in 1993.

Bjerke says Madison has been a great place for her. She’s taught photography classes through UW Extension in Rhinelander and with UW mini courses. She also teaches an occasional Elderhostel at George Williams Campus of Aurora University in Williams Bay, Wis.

“I really need time to be by myself to do my work, but I also need time with others.” Teaching meets that need for Bjerke. “I like being with people who want to be there. A non-academic environment is nice because no one is there just for the credit.”

“The things that get [my students] most excited is talking about seeing more. There are so often some wonderful surprises. People come with expectations, then their goals change. It’s more exciting than they expect it to be and that’s really exciting to me.”

Bjerke also teaches classes through The Center for Photography at Madison, which she founded in 1998 and serves as President of the Board of Directors. The center came out of Bjerke’s frustration with the Madison photography scene. “The university photo programs were limited and very much dispersed, the commercial galleries were reluctant or opposed to carrying photographs, most of the really creative stuff was being done quite literally in the dark, and the prevailing attitude toward photography even among other artists was very narrow,” she explains.

She eventually found a group of like-minded people who got CPM up and running. “It’s a lot of work on the part of a small but dedicated group of volunteers. But CPM is playing an important role in bringing people together to learn from one another and enjoy this marvelous medium,” she said. “A community of photographers is growing in Madison, as is an interest in exhibiting photography.”

That sentiment was made concrete by The Madison PHOTOFEST 2000, sponsored by CPM. The early March event featured works by more than 100 photographers at more than 40 sites in Madison. Many exhibits are still up (see sidebar), including one at King’s Foot Gallery that includes some of Bjerke’s work.

Several pieces on display at King’s Foot come from Bjerke’s LIFE BOAT series. The series of 20 images was Bjerke’s response to a cancer diagnosis in 1996 and the following treatment. “I journal a lot and that was what I did then. The [boat] symbol came from a journal entry describing the childhood memory of feeling strong and in control while rowing a boat. It was a good image to hang onto at the time and … I had a ready resource of boat pictures and waterscapes and could begin working even as I was somewhat preoccupied by the experience.”

Now, Bjerke remembers little of her illness. “I just remember doing my artwork,” she recalls. “It was something I could do and was something I needed to do. Any time we’re under pressure or stress – if we can allow it to happen, those can be very creative times. Our senses are so heightened.”

For most of the series, Bjerke used photographs of boats that she had taken many years before. The works are mainly collage and hand-colored prints. Only two are straight photographs. The series is now featured in a limited edition book, which Bjerke makes by hand, call LIFE BOAT. Her aim of the book is to help others in similar situations.

Also during her treatment, Bjerke and her geographically-scattered family and friends began collecting and enjoying snapshots of each other. From that “the LIFE SAVOR series emerged as I became aware of the analogy between my intent to preserve life in a literal sense and our custom of using photographs to store up life’s experiences in another way,” Bjerke says. To make the pieces, Bjerke stuffed plastic album pages with photos and photo fragments, then constructed vest-like sculptures. “One of the life vests, FUTURE MEMORIES, has blank bits of photo paper encased in the pockets of the album pieces. I did this piece to celebrate a good medical prognosis. It signifies the promise of more works to come.”

Torn images, like those in the life vests, have become a prominent feature in many of Bjerke’s recent works. “When I tear a print I’m bringing attention to the material the photo is on,” she says. A few years ago Bjerke did an entire exhibition around a torn six-foot-square print. “I also tore the print’s test strip into small pieces and scattered them like fallen leaves on the floor beneath the fissure. They reminded me of tears as well, and I noted that the word ‘tear’ – as in crying – looks the same as the word ‘tear’ – as in torn.”

Bjerke’s work is filled with symbols, although she didn’t set out to do that. “Suddenly there was the realization that there were lots of windows,” she says of her earlier works. “The window was the first symbol I was aware of. The window is a feminine thing because of its connection with home.”

Then, of course, there are the boats. “When I am really paying attention to what I’m seeing, I begin to realize that there are certain things that are my personal symbols. From that I come up with the concept that there are layers of visual stuff and those are the layers of what I feel in myself.”

Bjerke’s next project will likely involve old family photos. “Mom gave me all of her photos and some diaries she wrote while in high school, college and when she was first married. I just devoured them,” she said. “Over time, I have become more open while my mother has become more closed. But now I can connect to her through those diaries and photos. There are a lot of photographs of her as a young woman that intrigue me.”

“I think there are things I can glean from them,” she says of the images and words. “They may end up in book form rather than pictures to hang on a wall. But it will come out some how.”

Greene is editor of Wisconsin Woman.