A Saline Mind

The Movement of Bettina Werner

By Einstein

“Italy lives in the past. There’s no future for art there. All the support goes to restoration of the old.” As I listen and stare out to the Hollywood sign, I hear the sound of bustling Manhattan in the background. The thick Italian accent continues, “There’s an incredible past to live up to in Europe, a heaviness that doesn’t exist in America. There’s beauty everywhere, and there is art everywhere, but there are no museum memberships, no fundraisers, no budgets for new art in Italy.” A siren screams past. “America looks to the future. America builds the future.”

What sounds like a tangent, continues with more enthusiasm. “The US needs to look ahead because there isn’t much of a past. This is why there is a big support for art in the US.” Her voice grows louder and I imagine her fragile hands cutting the air. “It’s about the future, not the past.” The words in my ear, 3,000 miles away, are those of the Salt Queen, Bettina Werner, her passion reverberating off the walls of her downtown loft.

“Being an artist is difficult in Italy. Here, in the States, you have non-profit organizations, people buying art, contemporary galleries everywhere, budgets that support young artists. Here, it works. In America, being an artist can be a career.” She laughs incredulously, “The Salt Queen Foundation never would have happened in Italy. Never.”

Having lost faith in most gallery curator’s ability to archive art, and fearful of proven abandonment following the expiration of the artist or the gallery, Bettina Werner established the non-profit Salt Queen Foundation in 2002 to preserve and cultivate art created with textured colorized salt. As the mission statement explains, “The Salt Queen Foundation will endeavor to promote and education on the value and importance of salt in the history of humanity, and will seek to promote the recognition and appreciation of this new salt art, as well as to encourage the profound and often unquantifiable values utilized by other artists working with innovative artistic techniques and extraordinary media. Celebrating freedom of imagination, wisdom, knowledge, and expression.” The story of salty Bettina Werner stretches back almost two decades to Milan, Italy, where the Brera Academy of Fine Arts graduate established herself as one of few avante guard artists emerging from Italy. But following graduation, Bettina’s artistic expressions were quickly becoming muted, bottled up. “I was 21-years old. I knew I was doing something unique, but what could I do in Italy? When you’re young in Italy you don’t get much respect. I was young and I was pretty. It was so difficult to be an artist. I really felt that there was no future for me as an artist in Italy because as I said before, everything there is about preserving the past. And it is a beautiful past, but I felt suffocated by this beauty. I decided that I needed to go to America, to New York where I could really be an artist and be free from this past.”

At the tender age of 24, without a word of English in her vocabulary, Bettina packed her bags and bought a one-way ticket to J.F.K. After a few distractions, the tall beauty and her bags of Sicilian salt secured a contract at one of New York’s top galleries. “I spoke no English,” she laughs. “Nothing. But I didn’t care. Art was my first language. And it still is today.”

Her amalgam of Mediterranean colors, bags of salt, influences from her American heroes Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Richard Serra, and most importantly the soft movement of her hands, the Salt Queen was reigning over the Manhattan art scene from downtown to uptown. Her work crossed oceans from Athens to Los Angeles. Her American dream was happening, and very fast. “I believed in what I was doing and in America everyone else did also. That is what is beautiful here; if you believe in yourself, sooner or later people will look, people will listen. You can express yourself and you will get support.” She pauses, allowing for a screaming siren to pass. “Each New Yorker can paint their own canvas. People in Europe dream of New York, they dream of Manhattan. You need to believe, and here you can do that.”

From the romantic American living in Paris to the student studying in Florence, one would guess that being an artist just might be universal, but Bettina protests, “This is the only place in the world that truly supports art. In other countries, it’s so much more difficult. You will not find the same support.”

But it wasn’t always an afternoon stroll in Central Park. There were letdowns from business to love. Gallery owners taking advantage of the young artist, abuse of the art, and fraudulent business deals. Failed marriages and failed expectations. “Disappointment is universal. But to have disappointment, you need to live here longer. Then you find disappointment. It comes little by little, year after year. This disappointment is in the form of human relationships.” There’s a quick silence, broken by another horn blast. “Here you suffer from a lack of relationship. People come and go. In Europe you stay in your place. I am Italian in the sense that I believe in friendship, relationships. Some Americans are so involved in money and business, they don’t seem to care so much about friendship. They don’t have the time to grow or cultivate these relationships. Human relationship is so important, especially in Italy.”

3,000 miles away, I stare out my window towards the vast and empty Hollywood hills and ponder the expanse of land in between Bettina and me. The space.

“I have always lived in NYC while in the States. But they say America is not New York City. I haven’t traveled too much here, though I have been to Los Angeles, which I love, New Mexico, and Florida. The space is incredible!” She catches her breath. “Oh my God. Everything is so huge! The houses, the galleries. You can see huge paintings. My work became so much bigger when I arrived here,” she laughs. “You have the wall space, the canvases. You confront the reality of space and size. In Europe we don’t work with these massive dimensions, unless you’re restoring a masterpiece.

In Manhattan I’m in the centre of the world, and it’s incredible to see the rebuilding after 9/11. I truly believe that 3,000 souls called artists to rebuild downtown. Only with this creativity and energy has downtown been rebuilt. It is a blessed area. I live in a loft, which was designed by Philip Starck, across from the New York Stock Exchange. I throw rock salt at their windows to remind them that salt is more precious than gold.” I laugh then pose the question, “Where is home?” She pauses again allowing the sonic wizardry that is Manhattan to soundtrack her words.

“Home is something you create.” “Where is the most beautiful place you have…?” “Saline di Margherita di Savoia!” she interrupts. “The salt mine in Puglia! I was ashamed I didn’t know about this. It’s the oldest and the biggest salt mine in Europe. It was so beautiful.”

Spilling out ingredients to her recipe, she continues, “It’s very important to share cultures. When one lives in NY, they mix. I bring all the beauty of my country to my work. My work is minimalism. I believe less is more. I only use salt and colors. And behind these textures are the warm colors of the Mediterranean. I bring my Italo-Euro style to America and mix it with that of the US, and I feel complete. I’m a new breed.”

“A breed of Dalmatian?” I add referring to Tibino, the inspiration behind much of her work. She laughs. “Exactly! I am black and white, but with spots!” I smile and crane my neck to an easel sitting in the corner of my living room. Blank.

She continues, “Minimalism was created in America. They expressed their ideas of cleanliness and purity. This is very difficult for a European to understand because their taste is so traditional. It’s a question of sensibility. Less is more. My work is salt and color.”

“How is this different than paint and a canvas?” “The process. The movement of my hands against the salt. The simplicity. It’s very calming.”

What one may consider a dichotomy of simplicity found in a complex being suits Bettina well. She plays backgammon, but believes chess is more intellectual. She created The Salt of the Earth Backgammon Tournament. “It was an artistic way to bring people together.” The preliminary rounds were played on a massive salt-sculptured table. Participants competed for a Werner original Salt Crystal Backgammon Board. The final game was played on a gigantic salt-sculptured board with huge dice. The runner-up received a leather-bound portable backgammon set, courtesy of Salvatore Ferragamo, while the winner has a massive salt sculpted backgammon set sitting in his living room.

When Bettina isn’t at her Manhattan loft, she can be found in her Water Mill potato barn in the Hamptons. This is the studio where her thoughts come to life in various shapes and forms; from stretched out paintings to sculpted Dalmatians, all made from salt. This Mediterranean minimalism is all around her. Massive colored salt sculptures sit peacefully in trees, while salt sculpted dice are fixtures in the backyard. “I love dice. They’re a symbol of risk, of chance. And life is always a gamble.”

She misses Tibino who passed away last year after 13 1/2 years together. “I loved Tibino so much.” Past the point of teary-eyed, she tells a story.

“I got Tibino here in America. He was American and he would come to Italy with me whenever I would visit or had a show. One time at JFK airport, they stopped me because at that time I didn’t have a green card. But Tibino was American, so they let him right through!” We both laugh and I then share the secret of my dog’s Italian passport. She continues, “The American human-dog relationship is like that of the Italian mother and her child. You do everything for your dog, the same way an Italian mother does everything for her child. You spend your money on the dog, maybe you cook for the dog. Everything!” she laughs.

I turn in my chair and notice mine flat out on the floor staring at me. “Wouldn’t you agree that the relationship between people and dogs is different here than in Italy or Europe in general?“

“Well, showing the love of the dog is a business here. We don’t have these things in Europe.”

“Just wait,” I chime in. “The same was said about Starbucks.” “Well, here we’re contaminated by this. Giant pet stores, dog shows.

There’s less exposure in Europe. I think Americans create an attachment to their pets out of loneliness. Once again Americans are always moving about and there’s not much human relationship with each other compared to Europe. But I had so much love for Tibino and I did all these things we‘re talking about. I guess I became American.”

While some internationals living in the States grab at their roots, Bettina doesn’t claim to do anything special to feel Italian. She visits Italy 2-3 times a year. Contrary to popular belief about Italians, she claims to be a “disastrous cook and doesn’t care too much about food.”

Her most recent Salt Queen Foundation conception was an international song contest where musicians from around the world submitted a song about salt, be it lyrical or instrumental. As explained on her website, “In ancient times the muses, the goddesses who inspired poetry and song, were invoked at the beginning of an epic poem or classical story to grant inspiration to the artist. In the same way, Bettina Werner will unite music with visual art in the Salt Queen Foundation's song competition "In the Name of Salt," a unique artistic collaboration in which the songwriter/composer will create a song inspired by salt, which in turn will be the inspiration for a salt painting by Werner. This work will be the physical manifestation, through color and texture, of both salty muses. In her paintings, created with a textured colorized salt technique, the salt, the muse of artist Bettina Werner, becomes music on canvas, a path through the eyes to the heart, and fills the soul with color.”

Amongst a copious amount of entries from around the world, the winner was Simone Lo Porto who received $5,000 and an original Bettina Werner salt painting created while listening to his song ‘Fiume di Sale.’

The Salt Queen Foundation is growing, as is the Salt Queen herself. “My life is always changing. I really love it here. This is the only place they look at art without prejudice.” Again, I stare back at my blank canvas, my dog, then out to the emptiness that is the Hollywood Hills. “Here,” Bettina says, “here, there is hope.”

For more on Bettina Werner and her foundation visit:

www.thesaltqueenfoundation.org

Back to Top Next Feature