Bernice Massé Rosenthal (1938 – 2022) began work as a Registered Nurse in Boston. There she met a crowd of young artists and decided to go to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her focus was on stone sculpture and painting. She was awarded the Fifth-Year traveling fellowship which she took in Greece. Lots of stone in Greece. She was hooked. Bernice became an artist.
Bernice’s art evolved in form, color and scale over the years. She found inspiration from nature, from architecture, from cartography and from her travels with sketchbook on five continents. Found objects were incorporated into her assemblages. With castoff materials she would ask, “What can I do with that?” Often the result was whimsy and interaction, as exhibited in this video presenting ‘Tango.’ Her artistic reach extended to glazed ceramic tiles and domestic and public murals. She was imaginative in concept, skilled in technique, and meticulous in execution. Bernice took the design from one medium to another, as with stone to wood, or stained glass to collage. Found objects and injured furniture was incorporated into her assemblages. Her mantra: “Transforming discard into beauty and meaning.”
The catalog of Bernice’s work includes hundreds of pieces. Her art has been exhibited in numerous galleries on the Maine Coast, where she lived for a decade, and various institutional and gallery venues in Massachusetts, and includes juried and solo shows. Her work is in several private collections.
