by Deborah Rosenberger

From the streets of Brooklyn to a one-room schoolhouse in Cherokee County, Oklahoma, Sandra (Riesberg) Bierman's life experiences have been widely diverse. Her father was an immigrant from Sweden and her mother was a Texas farm girl. Sandra's parents were divorced when she was four. Bierman grew up mainly in Houston, Texas, but she was introduced to a variety of environments as a young child due to poverty and an unstable home life. Her mother had Schizophrenia and Sandra lived on and off with her maternal grandmother and pseudo foster families until high school when she was on her own. Bierman's grandmother was the only consistently caring and loving person in her childhood and appears in many of Bierman's paintings.

Bierman attended a different school every year, usually moving in the middle of the school year, except for her last two years of high school. She describes herself as being lucky that she was born with gifts to survive her childhood. “One gift was my artistic talent, but the ability to reason and the will to overcome were also valuable.” As a sensitive child she found solace in her ability to draw, sometimes on walls or broken furniture when her school notebook paper ran out. “When things were bleak I would go off by myself in a corner, on a bed or in a tree and draw my heart out,” she said. It is no wonder that Bierman was unable to concentrate on studies in school and was thought to be retarded by some teachers. This was later proved wrong when she became a regular on the Dean's List at New York University as an English major, became founding Editor of a successful New Jersey newspaper and moved on to became a VP in a leading world class bank in New York City.

Although she thought of herself as a failure while growing up, the golden thread of her artistic talent followed her, and in that genre she gained pride. As a young girl her art won many awards in both city and national competitions, and a few of these prized works landed a spot in local museum exhibitions.

At 16 Bierman moved to Maryland to live with a great-aunt. In high school she was coerced into a clerical, commercial track, but the only studies she was interested in were literature, creative writing and art. Bierman's art teacher was very supportive and fought for an art scholarship for her, and upon graduation from high school in 1957 she was awarded a full 4-year scholarship to the Maryland Institute of Art.

Bierman's art education was cut short when she married a Naval Academy midshipman. Several years later at the age of 24 she had three children and lived in New Jersey. During the 1960's Bierman attended art school part-time and studied with the late John Grabach whose works are now in museum collections. Her husband entered law school and Sandra went to work full-time to help support the family. When law school ended, so did her marriage.

Later, in the 1970's she moved to New York and juggled evening class in Liberal Arts at NYU and art classes at the Art Students League, while during the day she began a new career. “I had taken a job with MCI feeling that I would surely fall on my face, but within a year I was a corporate Account Executive,” said Sandra. “I was lucky to have entered this field when it was emerging at the frontier of the 'information age.”

Nine years later Bierman was a Communications Analyst and a Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. She had moved form MCI to Director of Training in the Telecommunications Division of Manufacturers-Hanover Trust Co., then on to a promotion in the Operations Division of Chase Manhattan Bank. “Developing training programs for in-house users of voice and data communication systems was a creative job, especially the audio-visual training programs. Fortunately, I had a knack for writing and could visualize the end product. But I had forsaken my art. There was no room for art and a corporate career. I had become a work-a-holic and later realized I had not painted for almost 20 years...maybe it was gone? But I had a vision of myself as being an artist grandma some day.”

During her corporate career the greatest tragedy of Bierman's life began and greatly influences her present art work. One of her children became ill while in college with the incurable affliction of his maternal grandmother -- schizophrenia. Consequently, Bierman is a supporting member of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and she contributes part of her art income to science for research in that field. “Through research medical technology will one day discover how to detect this illness early. Already new drugs help alleviate the symptoms and prevent this illness from devastating some lives. My son is a wonderful human being. He was an honor student and had a promising future when this terrible illness afflicted his brain. It began eleven years ago, and I will never get used to the loss.

Ten years ago, in 1983, Sandra met and married Arthur Bierman, a Physics Professor at City University of New York. They both retired in 1986, and Sandra thought she could finally return to her art. Fearful that she had lost her talent, Bierman immediately entered a two-year drawing/painting workshop. Yes, her talent was still there and by the end of the second year she was producing major paintings and was receiving invitation from art galleries. Her first one-person show was in 1988 in New York just before she and her husband moved to Colorado.

Again Sandra began to work full-time--this time as an artist in her own studio. “Boulder is the only place I have lived where I feel I really belong,” said Bierman. Painting again, she has come full circle. She entered several local and regional shows in 1991 and 1992 resulting in two Best of Show Awards and one Best Oil Painting Award. Her work was voted the Public Choice at the 1991 show at the Boulder Art Center. Bierman was the first artist to receive a one- person, two-month exhibition invitation in both galleries at the National Center for Atmospheric Research art exhibition program (1991) The show was called Feelings of the Spirit, and consisted of 34 of the artist's works

In 1991 the Moon Dance Gallery in Santa Fe began representing Bierman, and her work is now a mainstay of that gallery. Locally her work has been shown exclusively at The Montgomery House Gallery, and a show is planned for March 1994. Earlier this year Galerie Du Bois in Aspen signed her on, and her work began selling immediately. Two years ago Blue Sky Publishing in Boulder added Bierman's Images to their line of greeting cards and they have become international best sellers. Crossing Press in California will publish her paintings in 1995 art calendars. Other publishers are knocking on her door to contract copyrights for prints.

Bierman said, “At this point in my life, I am 100 percent committed to my painting. I thought I was retiring to be a 'Sunday painter' but instead another career has developed. I am still pinching myself to make sure it is all real.” She works instinctively from her imagination with no visual guides such as photographs or models to guide her. She creates the work as she goes, not knowing what a piece will be or mean. Her artworks seem to exude nurture and healing--the elements absent in Bierman's early life. She is always anxious to begin the next piece. She says, “Its like an intriguing, never-ending journey of exploration.” It has been a long journey back to her art and one she hopes to continue for a very long time.

Women's Magazine/December 1993