GRAMERCY PARK — When renowned painter and textile artist Katherine Bernhardt talks about her biggest influences, she doesn't mention iconic artists.
Instead, the Brooklyn-based artist talks about one of her closest friends, a former classmate from her undergrad days a the Art Institute of Chicago. Terra Fuller may not be a household name, but she was the one who helped Bernhardt find her inner style by simply encouraging her to travel.
Now, Bernhardt is paying homage to her inspiration at the School of Visual Arts, where she and other successful female graduates will show their work side-by-side with the artist they have found most influential.
Called "The Influentials," at the School of Visual Arts gallery, the exhibit pairs the famous women artists with an array of influential mentors, from friends like Fuller to instructors at major universities like photographer Jo Ann Walters.
"It's inspiring," she said about the exhibit, explaining that her whole sense of style emerged from the things she learned from following her friend in her travels around Equador and Morocco.
"I'm into the adventure and the remote things. I like learning about indigenous culture, like living in a mud house in a place that looks like the Grand Canyon."
Like many of the others in the exhibition featured at the school's Chelsea gallery, the two artists styles are closely related. Fuller and Bernhardt would go together to Moroccan houses for days on end searching for new inspiration after Fuller discovered the joy of weaving on a Peace Corps trip.
When comparing Bernhardt and Fuller's pieces, the similar inspirations evident by the use of bright pinks and reds, symbolic shapes and jagged diagonal lines.
Bernhardt said she appreciates the "indigenous" element brought out in the Moroccan carpet paintings that she's now become known for. For her last exhibit, she brought the area to New York when she transformed the Lower East Side gallery space CANADA into a Moroccan home, complete with carpets on the floor, pillows and even hookahs.
"There's symbolism in it, that I usually make up," she added about the piece she will be showing for the exhibit. "The one I have here has sheep in it. But it's very abstract."
When placed side by side, not all the artists have such a striking resemblance to their influences, however. Some artists have taken segments of their mentors' styles, like round shapes and the focus on solitary color, to put into their work.
The artwork shown from 18 women graduates run the gamut, from dreamlike swirls of paintings to black and white pop art to postmodern sculpture.
The artists' influences ranged from a grandmother to painters the SVA graduates had never even met.
One thing that SVA director of development Carrie Lincourt learned from the exhibit is "how natural and sort of simple influence is, instead of being some sort of esoteric thing."
"The Influentials” will be on view at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, New York City, from August 26 – September 21, 2011.
