Fertile Disruptions
Showing from May 10, 2025 - August 31, 2025
Meet the Artist
Wendy Hirschberg
I have lived in Bloomingdale, NJ for eight years, which is in Passaic County. Having lived in Brooklyn for almost thirty years, I am still exploring New Jersey and enjoying living in an area where there are many rivers, lakes, great hiking areas and wonderful parks. I live with my husband Franklin Heller and my stepson, Zach. My son, Miles Emanuel, lives in Manhattan.
I feel that the move to New Jersey has drawn my focus to natural surroundings and the environmental concerns that are now a central feature in my artwork. I have a storefront art studio in Butler NJ and am delighted to be exhibiting my work in New Jersey, which is my relatively new home state.
My website and resume reveal that I am open to new ideas and move in new directions as an artist. While I have made sculpture since I was a child and have done installation work, I also made puppets to donate to nonprofits during the pandemic. I have exhibited my work in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Morristown, NJ but also in Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands.
My work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, the LA Times, Modern Painters Magazine and in newspapers in Belgium and The Netherlands. I have a Masters of Fine Arts from Queens College and received a scholarship during graduate school to attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Artist Statement
This series of work is a reflection on the impact of climate change on our natural surroundings. Some of the work is inspired by the dire predictions that are focused on the future: will plants grow from the ground with plastic parts? Will we be able to enjoy nature as we continue to negatively impact our waterways? How will fires around the world be contained? Will the heating of the planet create unknown disasters for our children?
The “Up from the Fire” series and the piece I have called “Mal Crecimiento”, which is Spanish for “Bad Growth”, are my response to the fires which have impacted New Jersey, devastated Los Angeles and caused chaos in so many parts of the globe.
The “Odd Arrival” series relates to reading I have done about microplastics in our food. I often eat apples and carrots which are two of the foods most impacted by microplastics! So, this series is about imagined future plants! “Lost Time” is a piece that includes floating pages I think of as paper, reminiscent of the paper that floated to Brooklyn where I lived when the World Trade Towers came down.
The piece I call “Errant Development” is new content as I am starting to explore how the over development of real estate impacts our natural surroundings. And “Mutation” is my take on how plastic and nature may begin to merge as we fail to recycle so much of what we produce.