As part of ongoing celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, artist Rachel Olivia Berg will lead a discussion and hands-on workshop to create a woven flag as a living artwork that reflects diverse experiences of freedom, identity, and belonging. Using strips of red, white, and blue fabric as symbolic material, community members will write personal reflections in response to guided questions from the artist. These strips will be woven together on a simple loom, forming a collective flag that represents the voices of community members.
Berg, who divides her time between Greenwood Lake, NY and South Dakota, is an interdisciplinary Mnicoujou Lakota artist. “My work emerges from observation of the natural world, Lakota values, and Indigenous ways of knowing,” Berg says. “Through these lenses, I have investigated human relationships with the environment, examined natural cycles, and drawn on creation stories and star knowledge of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) to open conversations about divergent cultural understandings of ‘being’ and the worldviews that shape how communities live, remember, and imagine the future.”
She will pose questions to the group exploring the evolving meaning of “Independence”, “Liberty”, and the “Pursuit of Happiness across time and lived experience. She hopes the project will foster dialogue around place-based history in Warwick, and support intergenerational learning and discussion.
Berg earned a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and American studies at Princeton University and later completed a master’s degree in art and art education at Columbia University Teachers College. Her career spans more than 20 years and includes gallery exhibitions, awards, public lectures and workshops, as well as community art projects and commercial art commissions in buildings and institutions across North America.