Born in New Jersey in 1998, then raised in a beach town on the coast of North Carolina, Erin Bergmann is a sculptor working out of Philadelphia currently. She’s found her place with figurative mixed media work, centering around ideas of otherness and trauma, in her undergraduate years at University of the Arts with the goal of shifting to graduate studies in the field of Art Therapy immediately following. The focus on human form and gesture are heavily influenced by an entire childhood, adolescence, and one undergraduate year as an aspiring classical ballet and modern dancer.  

 

Her performance experience includes lead roles in City of Ballet of Wilmington’s A Carolina Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, and Firebird from 2013 to 2016. Prior to that, she danced competitively in tap, jazz, hip hop, and ballet since the age of three- winning eighth place in a national competition for a solo tap dance at age 8. Within the City Ballet school company, she had the opportunity to perform Viva Vivaldi with the honor of being staged by Joffrey's former ballet mistress Diane Orio Gerberg in 2016. She also performed as a core member in a local modern dance company titled Forward Motion Dance from 2015 to 2017 and participated in the University of North Carolina School of the Art’s Comprehensive Summer Dance Concert in 2013 and 2014.

 

After a year as a dance major at the University of The Arts ending in 2017, she shifted to visual art. Her first group exhibition featured just a small painting in a show titled New Beginnings at The Common Room in Philadelphia PA, curated by Karra Osler. In 2018, she organized and hosted a student showcase “Prevailing Over Adversity” for the University of the Art's’ chapter of Delta Alpha Pi International Honor Society- an academic honor society founded to recognize high-achieving students with disabilities. In 2019, she participated in the annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby in which she created a giant bell atop a working bike, sponsored by Bell’s Bike Shop, winning “best first-time participant” in the Derby and going viral on a Philadelphia tourism instagram page. In 2020, she received The Walter Erlebacher Memorial Excellence in Figure Modeling award.