Michael Wolff, "Will America stick to its guns now?" in GQ London, E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), illustration
Beth E. Wilson, Chronogram Magazine, "Lucid Dreaming: Aesthetic Dis(interest)," commenting on TSL exhibition, "War: Materials and Lies":
But the real show stopper here is Berta Leone’s E PLURIBUS UNUM (Out of Many, One), an American flag-cum-wall-hanging constructed out of 30,000 spent bullet casings painstakingly punched and wired together. (The whole thing weighs 500 pounds!) Leone made the piece in 2001, finishing it in late summer after months of laborious work. She told me she went to visit with friends in Canada not long after, planning to stay for some months, but then 9/11 happened—and she felt like she needed to “come home.” It’s amazing how the shifting frame of world politics has relocated the emotional core of this powerful piece, and perhaps it’s a testament to both the vision of the artist and the beauty of the finished work that it can withstand the vagaries of US foreign (and domestic) policy so well—or perhaps it’s telling us something about the trajectory the country was already on, even before 9/11. Regardless, experiencing the work in this exhibition underscores for me the ever greater need to find ways of re-incorporating the beautiful, deploying the power of the aesthetic, into the sphere of otherwise business-as-usual politics. Connecting these dots is an exercise that not only artists need to dedicate themselves to.
Tadd Gero, The Independent, "Artists Take on the Subject of War", quoting Linda Mussmann, Co-director of Time Space Limited, Hudson, NY:
Mussmann finds the flag imagery of “E Pluribus Unum” especially stimulating. “I love the American flag,” says Mussmann. “It means so many things to me: my country, my culture. You automatically get a strong response from it."
Mary Ann Marger, St. Petersburg Times, "On second thought, beneath the surface," reviews Steel Quilt I:
New materials and technological developments make it impossible for an art lover to keep up with every new process, but in some works, the technique becomes obvious by examination. Berta [Leone] fashions her quilt of steel squares and triangles, some brushed metal, some pocked, some striped. The whole is suspended by cable from the ceiling and stitched together by wires that are pulled through the back of the work.