RENA FORMAN

FORMAN--Rena Bass. On November 27, 2011, we lost Rena Bass Forman: a lover of nature, a passionate artist, but above all a devoted daughter, wife, and mother. Rena, 57, died from complications of a malignant brain tumor. Born on March 17, 1954, she was the only child of Anne Loewy Bass, a holocaust survivor, and Milton Bass, a garment business owner in Manhattan. She grew up in New York City, studying ballet with George Balanchine. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis ended her career as a dancer, but her love of the arts endured. She attended Hofstra University and Rutgers University, earning a Master's degree in Arts in Education. In 1978, Rena married Scott Forman. They moved to Massachusetts in 1981 where she worked at the DeCordova Museum for two years. She began to photograph landscapes in 1978. Several of her hand-painted photographs were published in various treatises on the topic. She began shooting medium format black and white, gelatin silver, sepia-toned photographs in the late 1980's. She has been represented by the Bonni Benrubi Gallery and the Winston Wachter Fine Art gallery since 1991. Rena traveled the globe in search of inspiring landscapes. Her bodies of work include images from locales as diverse as the American Southwest, Turkey, Indonesia and Chilean Patagonia to Atlantic Canada, Iceland, Greenland and the Norwegian Archipelago of Svalbard. Her work has been shown and collected widely throughout the United States and Europe. It is imbued with the timeless atmosphere of diverse and endangered landscapes. She is survived by her dearest husband, Scott Forman, MD of Piermont, New York, two devoted daughters, Zaria of Brooklyn, Leila, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her loving father, Milton Bass of Tamarac, Florida. Please send donations to Wings Trust, Greenland Expedition, P.O. Box 52, Palisades, New York 10964.