Ornamental Elements

Harriet Estel Berman uses post consumer materials to construct jewelry, teacups, even entire lawns. Her Identity Bead series “symbolizes our personal search for identity in our material culture. Bar codes and brand name material from post-consumer tin cans recycle our unconscious consumption of advertising, marketing, and possession as identification. In a society so transitory and hyper-marketed one may wonder who we really are, for how much of our own identity is derived from what we consume and why we consume it?”