BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Robert Berks communicates on a grand scale. His portraits in bronze pique the viewer's interest in his subjects, their accomplishments, the high points of their lives. The facets of Berks's broken surfaces create movement, so that each viewpoint evokes a different aspect of the subject's personality. In effect, the viewer is drawn into a visual dialogue as he confronts each work. Berks's monuments carry this further. They invite viewers to interact; often to touch; sometimes, actually, to climb on them. It is not uncommon, day or night, to find people sitting in the lap of Berks's twenty-two foot seated figure of Albert Einstein. As people mill past him on Pittsburgh's busiest street, they greet the late Mayor Richard Caliguiri as he stands casually on the steps of the City and County Building, studying a map of Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle. Deep within a rhododendron forest outside Brussels, a contemplative Arthur K. Watson shares the quiet nature walk with students at IBM's Arthur K. Watson International Education Center. Students at Brandeis University stand under Justice Brandeis's extended hand for good luck before they go into exams. "Meet me under the Kennedy head" is the watchword at the Kennedy Center. With all of these works, there is an interaction between the viewer and the work of art.