DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / May 2, 1999

Sparks are flying at Hudson Services Inc. in LaPlace, and they’re beingignited by a most unlikely source. It seems the folks at Hudson Servicesare getting all fired up about art.

While the company is primarily involved in installing blowout preventers on offshore rigs, for the next few months it will also be serving as an artist’s studio.

Gerry Berg, former construction worker, is the artist-in-residence.

The metal sculptor and “torch artist” has set up shop in LaPlace to breathe life into his latest brainchild – a masterpiece of epic proportions which he plans to unveil at a New Year’s celebration to usher in the new millennium.

Roughened by years of exposure to the elements, Berg, 60, wields a welding torch as delicately as a painter wields a brush to fashion his creation out of huge pieces of sheet metal he’s salvaged.

By the time he’s finished the work will be 60 feet long and stand 32 feet high.

Berg, whose sculptures have been sold throughout the United States and other parts of the world, hopes his latest work will find a place in New Orleans, hopefully at an environmental museum.

The idea for the sculpture called “Vandal 2000” came to him about six years ago and, as he says, it seems he’s “been working on it for a lifetime.”The main problem was finding a place to construct the huge sculpture.

Things fell together about a year ago when the people at Hudson Services, where Berg’s son Gerry works, gave him the go-ahead to build on their property and use their equipment. In exchange, Berg lends a hand in theirshop when they’re shorthanded.

Weather permitting, he hopes to have the sculpture finished in the next few months.

The idea for the work came to Berg from the invasion of Rome by the Vandals 2000 years ago. Berg likens modern man to the Vandals of twomillenniums ago. But, he says, instead of Rome, modern Vandals aresacking the entire planet Earth.

Using his smaller prototype he has crafted as a model, Berg uses a piece of soapstone to sketch fullsize pieces of his design onto sheet metal propped up outside the back entrance to Hudson Services.

He cuts the pieces out with a torch, bending or hammering them into shape before welding them together. The finished work will have a three-dimensional look.

When finished Berg’s work will resemble a human form featuring a fat head with a pig’s nose and ears. Berg says it will symbolize mankindgobbling up natural resources from the “Horn of Plenty,” which is the Earth.

The belly is filled with what Berg considers the three biggest problems the Earth is faced with today: population, technology and immorality.

Inside the belly a scale weights money on one side and wheat and barley on the other to symbolize the old saying “what goes around, comes around.”The brain, instead of being in the head, is in the hand dumping “Vandal 2000” on the earth, representing all the destruction man is imposing upon the planet.

Further down the body, the man withers away to skeletal legs because he has foolishly wasted his food, water and habitat. One foot holds back atime bomb to simulate the future, while the other supports wine and oil needed for healing.

The finished form will be painted and polished from the top of its gold head to the silver body, a copper belly and last but not least, rusty legs.

Pieces are welded and bolted together to give it a three-dimensional look.

Atop the human form, out of a lighter steel, Berg will form the words “Vandal 2000” eight times. The words will be woven together in such away that they will sway in the wind.

Since 1975, in between construction jobs, the elder Berg has plied his craft in other areas of the country, including Seattle and California. Heworks mainly with metal now but has also worked in concrete, bronze and wood.

In Alaska, he was commissioned for a sculpture that now finds its home in Russia. Another sculpture is at a South American winery, and two are inGermany.

Berg has also received recognition on the local front, taking first place for sculpture at a recent art show sponsored by the River Region Arts and Humanities Council at Destrehan Plantation.Back to Top

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