Full Circle: Origins and Revolutions

Frontline Arts’ 50th Annual Benefit Honorees

The Late Lois Berghoff, Honoree

(via daughter Linda Berghoff)

As one of the original founders of the Printmaking Center of New Jersey, my mother Lois Berghoff knew the importance of supporting the arts and artists. She was a pioneer. From co-founding a printmaking organization in N.J. to being one of a few contemporary art galleries in Tampa, Florida, after which transitioning to a professional gallery/screenprint workshop printing exceptional well-known artists. My mother was a true trailblazer.

Art has been a major interest of my mother her whole life. She recollects that in elementary school, “I was the one who had to do all the posters.” On graduation from high school, she won a scholarship to John Herron Art School, Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Soon after my mother met and married a fellow art student, my father, Jack Berghoff and moved to Detroit, Michigan where he became a designer for Chrysler Corporation. Motherhood followed and after a few years our family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There my father became head designer for a textile company.

After graduating with an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, my mother taught painting and design at Tyler. Soon after my family moved to Bound Brook, N.J. and my mother decided to join an artist alliance group. She met many like-minded artists with an interest in printmaking. She also became a member of the Hunterdon Art Center serving on their Exhibition Committee. She exhibited widely at this time and won numerous awards for her prints, such as the N.J. Governors Purchase Award. Also, during this time due to my father’s occupation, my parents traveled throughout Europe, South America and Japan. And with his business ties in Japan my father was able to arrange for my brother an Asian Studies major to live and work there. This allowed my mother to visit my brother frequently where she researched Japanese papermaking villages in Nagoya and Ogawa Machi. As a result, she developed communications with Japanese artists for future exchange exhibitions and networking possibilities.

At this point in time the idea of a printmaking center was born. The Printmaking Center of N.J. was an idea and a dream of Lois Berghoff, Zelda Burdick, Florence Wender, Carol Yudin, and Peter Chapin. Now, years later it still has a history of accomplishments. In 1988 my parents moved to Tampa, Florida and opened Soho South Gallery, exhibiting local as well as national artists. My mother immersed herself in the local art scene joining the Artist Alliance, visiting galleries, museums and the well-known Graphic Studio at the University of South Florida, now the “Institute for Research in Art.” For many years she also did art appraisals for curators at Graphic Studio, the Tampa Museum of Art and many other collectors of fine prints.

It was about this time my mother met Dorothy Cowden, who was the gallery director at the University of Tampa. And in 1988 they joined forces to establish a unique screenprint workshop to foster fine art printmaking. Their enthusiasm, determination and expertise resulted in Berghoff-Cowden Editions. They acquired a reputation for bringing internationally renowned contemporary artists such as Sam Gilliam, Miriam Shapiro and others. Each artist came for an intensive two-week work session where they produced small editions, monoprints and unique variations.

Berghoff-Cowden closed in 2006. In writing this short biography of my mother, I found her history of accomplishments inspiring. From the Printmaking Center of N.J. to Berghoff-Cowden Editions, my mother’s journey was always inclusive for she loved bringing others who loved art along for the ride.

The Late Zelda Burdick, Honoree

(via son Barry Burdick, and granddaughters Shanna and Heather)

“Passion” is the best word to describe Zelda’s life and art. Over the span of seventy years she explored many media developing an amazing diversity of styles.

Zelda’s oils, pastels, charcoal, pen and ink and pencil drawings range from classic portraiture to abstract modernism. Fascinated by natural materials, she began to explore other media, and spent extensive time on papermaking and sculpting.

A keen observer, she traveled the world and explored new techniques. Her ever-expanding palate included daylilies, Italian marble, bird feathers, European glass, flax and artichokes. Moving beyond her canvasses, she began making her own paper for her watercolors, creating her own glazes for her clay work and illustrating books that she wrote on handmade paper.

Her adoring husband, Abe (1911-2001), began his career a labor organizer whose political fervor mirrored her creative genius. He later joined with Zelda to create Zelbur Ceramics Studio. Under the Zelbur banner, Zelda conducted classes, exhibited artwork and Abe manufactured clay slip and color glazes. Zelda often signed her work “Zelbur.”

Her leadership in the artistic community could be seen through her endeavors as the art director and one of the founders of The Printmaking Council of New Jersey (1973-1983), a member and corresponding secretary (four years) of Artistic Equity of New Jersey, a New Jersey State evaluation panelist for grants and fellowships (1981), a member of the Women’s Caucus for Art/New Jersey, a member of the International Association of Hemp and Paper Artists conference in Barcelona, Spain, and a member of the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists.

Peter Chapin, Honoree

I was born in a 9th floor apartment in New York City in 1938 and then attended grade school in NYC where in 5th grade I invented biomorphic abstraction when I painted Donald Duck’s beak (in cadmium yellow light on brown wrapping paper) and then anticipated Pop Art by several years when I painted the rest of Donald.

In 1950 my father characterized me in a letter to the head of a school to which I was applying by writing “Peter likes music, and he messes around with paint” describing accurately the technique I have used ever since. At an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts I was lucky to have generous amounts of time to do visual art with art teacher, Jack Murray, who I realize was teaching us to paint our way through Art History by means of studio projects. At college I majored in less messy but more scholarly Art History.  In 1962 I earned an MFA in Painting at Columbia University, guided by John Heliker and guest artists Philip Guston, Jack Tworkov and other New York School artists.

I was married to Helen Gallagher in 1960 (universally known as “Honey” since childhood). She continues to this day to be the most important influence and inspiration for me and my work. We have three sons, one daughter, and six grandchildren.

We lived in Mendham, New Jersey, for 25 years, where I taught at Drew University and then was one of the founders of, and Art Director for, the Printmaking Center of NJ. In 1979 Lee Hall, when she was President of the Rhode Island School of Design, brought Honey and I out to Santa Fe. The plan was for us to found an art junior college here, but that never happened when a few years later Lee resigned from RISD. Honey and I then moved to Santa Fe in 1987 anyway. In retrospect I realize I was very lucky that I wasn’t busy here being head of a school. Much better for me to be an ambivert! As an introvert I have concentrated on my own painting and printmaking, and as an extrovert I have worked with a series of non-profits here with wonderful people. Santa Fe is a fascinating community: sometimes troubled but often inspiring. My work with Habitat for Humanity and Cornerstones Community Partnerships has taught me much. I would like to think it has enriched my work.

In the summer of 2023 I joined Strata Gallery in Santa Fe, had a show of my own recent paintings in September, and continue to enjoy mentoring their young, marvelously creative “emerging” artists.

David Keefe, Honoree

David Keefe is an artist, educator, anthropologist, and activist that explores the spaces in which veterans connect and navigate narrative. Dave is currently the Director of Military and Veteran Community Engagement at the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University where he develops capacity building for veteran engagement on campus and in the New York City region. From 2015 - 2023, Dave served as the Senior Assistant Dean for Veteran Initiatives at Columbia University School of General Studies, and off and on since 2009, Dave has been a professor of art at Montclair State University. All along, Dave has worked as an artist showcasing his paintings, handmade paper, and prints across the country, and as an anthropologist exploring the intersection of art and narrative through innovative ethnographic methods of participatory storytelling and placemaking within marginalized groups.

Dave is also the co-founder of Frontline Arts, a national nonprofit based in New Jersey that houses the award-winning program, Frontline Paper (formerly known as Combat Paper NJ, which he also co-founded in 2010). This program (initiated by the Printmaking Center of NJ) has connected veterans and various communities since 2010 through co-creative workshops that teach the craft of making handmade paper from military uniforms to claim agency over experience, foster a sense of belonging, and amplify the silent voices that diversify the American veteran narrative. This practice has expanded across many veteran groups from Maryland to Maine who are navigating varied narratives, including an expansion at Columbia University to explore commonalities of migration between student veterans and international students. In 2019, Dave was awarded the Open Society Foundation’s Securing Open Societies Fellowship for utilizing this generative artmaking and creative ethnographic practice to explore the commonalities shaped by varied experiences of migration between an American veteran group, an immigrant group from Mexico located in the Bronx, NY, and Columbia University students. From this project, Dave is finalizing publication of a book on the creative encounter and a connective practice of crafting commonality through papermaking with American veterans.

Through his work at the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University, Dave is dedicated to exploring veteran transition and integration into education systems through similar innovative methods for capacity building and engagement. This includes an emerging project with community college veteran and support service groups in both urban neighborhoods within NYC and rural Appalachia along the Appalachia Trail from Eastern Pennsylvania through upstate NY and into Maine. Dave is also working with French former- military groups in Paris and Tours, France, as a comparative study between groups of French former military and the above-mentioned American veterans utilizing creative practices of storytelling within their first year transitioning out of service and into educational systems.

From 2001-2009, Sergeant Keefe served in the United States Marine Corps infantry as a Light Armored Reconnaissance Scout; from 2006-2007 he completed a tour of duty as a Riverine Scout along the Euphrates River in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province; in 2007 transitioned into graduate school 3 months after his combat tour; and 17 years later is in the middle of finishing his Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology at Teachers College Columbia University.

Dave resides in New Jersey, finds the creative encounter through participatory art, stares at blank canvases in his basement studio, makes art and life with his partner/artist-educator, Saydi, explores endless imagination, and the outdoors with their five kids, and provides a home to a growing assortment of pets.

Image Credits

Honoree photos courtesy of the honorees themselves or their families