. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Berks created a jaunty, heroic-sized head of the man whose courage, says Berks, held the country together in its darkest hours.
Berks's commissions have taken him to many unusual, makeshift studios; from the Kansas City office of Harry S Truman during his first year out office, to the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House in the last weeks of the Johnson Administration. He has worked in the quiet garden of General William Westmoreland's Hawaiian home and, when sculpting Leonard Bernstein, standing in the midst of the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic.
In 1958, Berks had access to Matthew Brady's original, untouched photographs of Abraham Lincoln. Believing that Lincoln had never been portrayed at the full height of his strength, Berks created what has come to be known as the "Gettysburg Lincoln". In 1959, an Act of Congress established the bust as the official Lincoln portrait for the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Year. The bronze original was dedicated that year in the Ford Theatre, Washington, D. C. In 1997, Berks created a new, heroic-sized interpretation. It presents a humane Lincoln, whose personality ran the gamut from high humor to deep despair. Working on the premise that photographs taken in Lincoln’s time required several minutes of sitting still, Berks sought the vital person behind the stiff pose.
