ARTIST STATEMENT
My art practice interrogates the intersection of personal and social harm, using clay as a tactile expression of our human flesh. I am submitting work that reflects on the range of women’s experiences in the unjust and misogynistic world we find ourselves in today. Economic exploitation, health care disparities, both as women and even more as women of color, and the attempts to sow intergenerational discord among women of all ages, are but a few of the many attempts to persuade us that we are isolated individuals, separated, with only ourselves to blame for our suffering. In fact, the trauma we experience is collective, and when we are able to see ourselves in one another’s eyes, our fighting spirit becomes unstoppable.
As elders and youth we support each other, and as women we find common ground in the power of our bodies to resist the anti-life forces that impact us day to day. We see the greed and selfishness of those who wish to enslave and exploit us. We do not turn away. We bear witness. We fight back.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I am a self taught artist who began working in clay half my lifetime ago, when I was dealing with traumatic memories. The clay became my teacher, leading me to see that what had happened to me was a microcosm of the trauma of the whole world, not only human, but all of life. At first I had great difficulty showing my work, and some of the earliest, most personal has never been shown. But as I began to understand the larger themes of what was coming through my hands, and I received encouragement from other artists and mentors, I found the courage to become more public. It seems to me that the themes of my earliest work, which had a hard time finding audiences when I created them, are today becoming more and more relevant. In particular I find betrayal of trust to be foundational in the dysfunctional social system consuming our planet. I am located in Oakland, California. I have been fortunate to have received several awards for my work, primarily in social justice and ceramic sculpture shows. In the past few years I have been thinking and writing about the likelihood of our extinction as a species, and my work in progress attempts to find a way forward that remains unattached to either hope or despair.
© Lorraine Bonner