Date and time: December 18, 2025. 6:30 - 8:30pm PT

Location: Online via Zoom (all members will receive a Zoom link via email prior to the meeting)

Cost: Free. No RSVP required.

Description: Barbara M. Berk’s artwork embodies the interplay of traditional textile technologies with metals. She has used both precious and industrial metals, working small and dense to create jewelry, and exploring volume and scale to create sculpture.

Barbara will give an overview of her career spanning more than three decades and show examples of her award-winning jewelry, which are woven by hand, off loom, with high karat gold and platinum sheet and wire. She will also present her sculpture that she creates with ribbons and crescents of bobbin lace that she makes by hand with stainless steel and phosphor bronze wire.

Barbara M. Berk’s journey has been circuitous: a childhood love of fabric and sewing; a Master’s Degree in Russian History; over 15 years in magazine publishing. Her introduction to antique jewelry led to studies in gemology and bench techniques – and the discovery that her true passion is working directly with metal. She learned that metal can be worked like fiber, by hand, yet produce structurally sound 3-dimensional forms. In 1992 she began creating sculptural jewelry with precious metals she wove by hand. By 2013, she was working larger scale, off-the-body, making lace by hand with industrial metals to create wall-mounted, ceiling-suspended and pedestal-supported sculpture.

Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MA), and the Museum of the GIA (Carlsbad, CA). Barbara is based in California.

All images of artwork below are created by and courtesy of Barbara M. Berk. From left to right “Not a Bow,” “Ruffle Brooch with Pink Tourmaline,” and “Toccata Pendant.”