In 2009, the Albert Lea Art Center will celebrate 50 years of learning, encouraging and promoting the arts as a vital part of our lives. In 1959, Lloyd Herfindahl and the students in his painting class decided they wanted to found an organization that would give them the chance to share their passion with others. Indeed, this has been accomplished, in ways undreamed of by those involved in the humble beginnings.

For most of those years, scrapbooks have been kept by local art historians, and browsing through those notebooks is bringing back memories of the days when I became a member of the organization more than twenty-five years ago. At that time, the Art Center was housed in a small church on West Main in Albert Lea, where most of the activities took place.

One of the first exhibits I saw there was by a local artist named Marga Bergie. I was enthralled with her work. She had a weekend showing other paintings, an abstract style, and she explained her work in an interview column by Mary Newgard who at that time was the Tribune’s family life editor. Mary described Marga as an “artist who does not believe in copying her surroundings. She paints what she thinks. Better yet, what she feels.”

In the article, Marga said, “I like to make political statements or point out feminist issues with my paintings. If someone can paint the land or the flowers then that is beautiful too, but that is not what I do … Someone may look (at my work) and say ‘what is that? I could do that.’ But you see they can’t. Because they can’t copy how I feel.”

Marga was not worried when someone would point out that her work didn’t make any sense. This was when she quoted the views of Paul Klee, her favorite artist. “Everything that an artist creates is to be found somewhere in the universe. He cannot create something which does not exist somewhere. You can not create something that is not.”

Marga was born in 1922 in Worms, Germany. She received a teaching degree from the University in Darmstadt. She taught school until 1948 when she flew to the United States to marry Romeo Bergie in Albert Lea. She loved all forms of the arts, and was an avid reader of literature, art, philosophy, religion, history, and a variety of newspapers in both English and German.

When she was 65 years old, her daughter Sigrid published a book of original poetry which was a Minnesota Voices Project winner. Sigrid had searched for an artist who could illustrate her poetry with the same feeling and heart in which it was written. Her choice was her mother. Amongst her poems of life experiences as a child, and as an adult in New York, Sigrid describes one of her mother’s paintings.

ROCK SONG

A brown rock is the foundation of your picture.

You have exposed its heart, colored and swirling like an agate.

It is as old as the earth, or older.

It is the glittering eye of her middle

Which is your altar, my soul.

Its voices speak unmoved by storms.

The rock is becoming

A storyteller of your pastels, my words.

When Marga Bergie died, her daughter wrote the obituary and closed it with these words. “We utterly miss our Marga. Our world is less colorful without you and more colorful because of you. We struggle with our pain. We love you so much, but you always knew that. Marga, thank you for creating a world with your soul. May we always walk with you.”

In its 50 years of existence, the Albert Lea Art Center has touched thousands of lives in many different ways — through music, sculpture, paintings, photography, the written word, and even karate. Please join us throughout 2009 as we remember those who built the foundation for the current programs, and as we continue to celebrate the creative side of our lives.

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center where the current show celebrates the holiday season with a dazzling display of Christmas trees and wreaths.