No Coast Craft-o-Rama: Megan Bergstrom

MB: For me, it's a lot about the process. I really enjoy working with my hands, and also the three-dimensional aspect of it. I'm one of those people who gets bored easily, and I find with ceramics I can always change something to make it more interesting for me again—the temperature of the fire, the way I fire, or the clay or glazes I use. There's a really broad range of both technical and aesthetic aspects to it. It's a medium that floats in between craft and fine art. It's fun to be able to play with that line and cross back and forth.

CP: Your pieces are very simple, but surprising and quirky. Where do you get your ideas and inspiration?

MB: It comes from a lot of different areas. My background in Latin American Studies plays into it quite a bit. I've spent a lot of time looking at Latin American folk art, Day of the Dead stuff. I'm also really into junk. I'm kind of a thrift-store shopper. I like objects, and I like sort of odd, quirky objects. I like a lot of antique things. I look at my own work as this kind of 1950s kitsch meets 1960s modern meets 1980s punk. I like that sense of bringing someone in closer with something that appears to be really cute, and then when they look at it a little more closely they get a little jab. Part of it, too, might come from a time when I was making really cute, cute pieces and I wasn't feeling so cute at that time in my life. So I started bringing in a little more edge to it.

CP: In what other ways has your art changed over the years?

MB: I did a lot of sculpture work for a long time. I did mixed-media installation works. A lot of that was sexually and politically charged stuff. I went through a big experimental phase. Then I started playing with pots again. Pots are traditionally considered craft. But why is that craft? Why is that not fine art? If you take a pot and you squish it and you put in on a wall, is it then fine art? So my work seems like it goes in circles in a way, where I'll go into sculpture and I'll come back around to a functional form, and then I'll make that functional form more sculptural. It's always changing.