Deborah Bohnert
18 Waldron Court, Marblehead MA 01945 781-639-8400
or send a message by signing my guestbook
www.deborahbohnert.com
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2007
Trustman Art Gallery:
Spinning Straw Into Gold, Ethics of Production
Curated by Barbara O'Brien, Director Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College
Danforth Museum of Art:
New England Photographers
Jurors: Karen Haas, Curator of the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Arlette Kayafas, Director of the Kayafas Gallery, Boston
Brush Art Gallery:
Massachusetts Artists 2007 Jurors Prize
Curated by Raphaela Platow Curator, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University
Danforth Museum of Art:
Community of Artists
Katherine French, Director of The Danforth Museum
Time Warner Gallery, Lynn Arts:
Art As Process: A Show for Process Artists
Curated by Charles Goss, co-designer of the Art As Process course at The Boston Museum School
2006
Attleboro Arts Museum
Small Works Exhibition
Juried by Katherine French, Director, Danforth Museum and Nancy Whipple Grinnell, Curator, Newport Art Museum
The Print Center:
80th Annual International Competition: Photography, The Aperture Award
Juror, Stephen Pinson, Curator, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library
BigTown Gallery Contemporary Portraiture
A.I.R. Gallery
Feminist Fashion Show
Jurors are Valerie Steele (Director of the Museum at F.I.T. and fashion
historian), Mimi Smith (artist), Daria Dorosh (artist and F.I.T. Professor),
BUST Magazine editor, Maki Kawakita (fashion photographer), Kayte Terry
(Ladyfest*East Fashion Committee Head), and Hannah Howard (designer, Sexfruit
Diety).
Brandeis University
Vital Voices: Women's Visions
Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, curator at the Kniznick Gallery (WSRC) and Raphaela Platow, Curator at the Rose Art Museum
Montserrat College of Art
Solo Exhibition: Out of the Ordinary
Carol
Schlosberg Alumni Gallery
Leonie Bradbury Gallery Director, Curator Montserrat College
2005
Peabody Essex Museum , In Nature's Company -- October 2004 - September 2005
Danforth
Museum of Art, New England Photographers 2005
Juried by Jurors are Leslie Brown, Curator, Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, Boston,
MA, Blake Fitch, Executive Director, Griffin Museum of Photography. Winchester,
MA, Beverly Snow, Photographer and Manager of the Danforth Museum of Art School,
and Katherine French, Director of the Danforth Museum of Art.
Griffin
Museum of Photography
, 11th National Juried Exhibition
Juried by Andy Grundberg
Cambridge Art Association
National Prize Show
Juried by Joseph Thomas, Director, Mass
MoCA
2004
Fort
Point Gallery
, Boston Skin: Two person show
Juried Barbara O'Brien, Executive Director,
Art New England
Curated by Bernd Haussmann
Attleboro
Museum, 6th Annual Small Works Honorable Mention
Juried by Dorothy Simpson Krause,
Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art
Gallery of Modern Art
, MA Fresh Paint
2003
Gallery of Modern Art, MA Deep Listening
Florence Griswold Museum,
The American River Best of Show
Juried by Carl Belz, Curator Emeritus of the Rose
Art Museum
C.W. White Gallery, Maine Re: Emerging Abstraction
Cambridge
Art Association Passion
Juried by William Stover, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,MA
2002
Gallery of Modern Art, MA Inner Voices
Brattleboro Museum
T.W. Wood Museum
The
Montshire Museum
The American River
Best of Show
Juried by Carl Belz, Curator Emeritus of the
Rose
Art Museum;
Jeff Rosenheim, Assistant Curator of Photography at the
Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York; Linda Simmons, Curator Emeritus of the
Corcoran
Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Gallery on the Green, CT National Small Works
Honorable Award
Juried by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Director of Curatorial Affairs at
Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park
MPG Gallery
, MA New Art 2002
Juried by Alison Kemmerer, Curator of Contemporary Art; the
Addison Gallery of American Art, MA
Cambridge
Art Association, Cambridge, MA Light
Juried by Adam Weinberg, Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
2001
Pleiades Gallery of Contemporary Art,
NYC 19th Annual Juried Exhibition
Juried by Lisa Dennison, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum
Gallery
on the Green, CT National Small Works
Juried by Richard Klien, Assistant Director of
The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
Attleboro
Museum, MA Small Works 2001
Juried by MJ Vino Crow, Professor of Fine Arts, Stonehill College and John Crow Phd., Professor
of Art Education, Mass College of Art
Cambridge
Art Association, Red, Best of Show
Juried by Harry Cooper,
Curator of Modern Art, Harvard
University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
2000
Barrett Art Center
, NY New Directions 2K, National Juried Show
Juried by Lisa Messinger, Curator, Department of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Gallery 214, NJ
Dreamscapes/ Landscapes, National Juried Show
Juried by Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey
Kingston Gallery
, MA, New Art Y2K
Juried by Susan Stoops, Curator of Worcester Art Museum
in Massachusetts
GoMA/Gallery of Modern Art
, MA Ten Contemporary Artists
PUBLICATIONS and REVIEWS
Artscope Magazine, Nov 2007 Lush by James Foritano
.."they dialogue with their new painterly backgrounds as awed onlooker, rambunctious participant or perhaps as an escapee regarding wistfully the illusionist frames from which they've dared to emerge into a world of time and consequence."
Studio Visit, Volume One 2007
a new series of juried artist books published by Open Studios Press
The juror Michael Lash, Museum and University Arts Consultant and former Director of Public Art for the City of Chicago.
Foto-ethnographie 2007
by Ulrich Hägele:
The visual method in the folk culture science. Bohnert's Color Series photo on the book cover as well.
Metro West Daily News September 13, 2007
Multiple visions at the Danforth
by Chris Bergeron
"
Dorothea Lange once urged other photographers to "really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind."
...While there are many standouts, Bohnert's "Self-portrait Cut Out" series is playful and profound in equal measures. She photographs herself as a sort of paper doll accompanied by constructed cut-outs of outfits that raise interesting questions about gender, role playing and identity.
In images like "Trendy and Bendy Debbie," she gazes into her own lens and the viewer in tights and frumpy hats as if to dare us to look and decide what we're really seeing.
Lange, whose classic photo "Migrant Mother" also stared into our souls, would approve.
"
The
Boston Globe September 6, 2007
Biennial in focus at Danforth
by Denise Taylor
"... Both photographers and jurors are clamoring to either get into or to jury what has become one of the region's premier showcases for regional talent.
"This is a very, very important show," said Leslie Brown, curator of Boston University's Photographic Resource Center, who cocurated the 2005 Biennial. "It's just exciting. It's a real community builder, and a lot of people come up to see it and to see who's in it."
Ask Karen Haas, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts Lane Collection, about the range of work chosen, and the excitement in her voice is palpable. "Some of the work that we particularly loved felt very personal," said Haas, who cocurated this year's biennial with Arlette Kayafas, director of Kayafas Gallery of Boston.."
Studio Visit Volume One 2007
a new series of juried artist books published by "Open Studios Press" - The juror Michael Lash Museum and University Arts Consultant and former Director of Public Art for the City of Chicago.
Metro West Daily News 2007
Where Art is All in the Family by Chris Bergeron
The Danforth Museum of Art. Framingham, Mass. "...Executive Director Katherine French described the paired shows as offering "some of the best contemporary work being made around Boston." ...Marblehead resident Deborah Bohnert's almost indefinable "Skin Wall" installation uses numerous balloons and other barely recognizable objects to give the impression of submarine life forms crawling along a beach."
The Daily New Tribune
On the Road to Lowell 2007 by Chris Bergeron
"The biennial Massachusetts Artists exhibit at the Brush Art Gallery showcases deserving artists from across the state. "..In a series of subversive self-portraits, Deborah Bohnert portrays herself with deadpan humor as "Fairy Princess Debby"
Catalogue - The Print Center - 80th Annual International Competition 2006
"I found that I was drawn to images created by artists who consciously played upon photography's inherent ability to create what I've come to think of as 'vestiges' -- visible signs (in a physical, rather than theoretical sense) of things witnessed, left, lost, remembered, or imaged"...... "Deborah Bohnert plays somewhere in the margins; her photograph nostalgically points to a not so distant past, but is obscured by other traces, which are themselves evidence of other histories, other media."
Stephen C. Pinson, Curator, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library
The
Boston Herald, January 21, 2005
Show
more than 'Skin' deepby Joanne Silver
... ."A
more startling vision of man and nature bursts forth in Bohnert's art. The doctored
balloons sport eye-popping colors along with physiological oddities. A Valentine's
Day's worth of pinks radiates from the painted covers of the four round throw
pillows. Found wooden boxes hold poetic pairings of objects, such as a hinged
shell and a fleshy deflated balloon. Everywhere, objects hint at organisms growing
and dying."
The
Boston GlobeDecember 31, 2004
More
than 'Skin' deepby Cate McQuaid
... "Deborah
Bohnert makes strong work that consistently unsettles; it both attracts and repels,
and that's a good thing..... Bohnert carries this exhibit."
Art New England, April / May 2005
"The
best remain the paintings in which Bohnert has made one big gesture (like an irregular,
kidney-shaped pool of pink flesh tone on white.) Some have added fabric collage
elements; though merely garments (a lacey sleeve, a ribbed blouse), these attachments
read as fossils, suggesting a human presence."
Art
New England, April / May 2003
... "The
final image often feels like an allusion to nature, something perhaps viewed under
a microscope. Initial familiarity fades as layers seem to separate from and then
melt back into the overall image, almost as if it being viewed is activating the
work."
The American River Catalogue, June 2002
Arts Media, June July 2001
Raymond Liddel;"The Gallery [Gallery of Modern Art } represents a small,
extraordinary group of artists that includes... Deborah Bohnert".
Media One, July 2000
Arts Media, March 2000
Eileen Kennedy "The show also includes Deborah Bohnert's moody neo-expressionistic oil canvas Traces I. In it, a forest full of varied
perspectives an exciting lexicon of shape and color. There is something of the feel and spiritual power of the Canadian landscape painter Emily Carr. We'd make the drive along the ocean just to see where this landscape painter is heading."
AWARDS and HONORS
Best Of Show
The American River
Juried by Carl Beltz, Curator Emeritus of the Rose
Art Museum and editor of Art New England
"One looks for the surprise when one is in front of a piece of art."
Honorable Mention
6th Annual Small Works
Attleboro
Museum, Attleboro, MA
Juried by Simpson Krause, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art
Honorable Award
4th Annual National Small Works
Gallery on the Green, Canton CT.
Juried by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Director of Curatorial Affairs at Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park
Best Of Show
Red
Cambridge Art Association
Harry Cooper, Curator of Modern Art, Harvard University Art Museums
"Technique is crucial in making art. But what is it? Is
it the power to make materials do exactly what you want? Or is it the ability
to establish a dialogue with them, to let them use you as much as vice versa?
This second kind of mastery is not easy to come by. To get it you have to acquire
the first kind (at least partly) and then let it go. In fact, it is less mastery
than a level of comfort with the medium, a receptivity to its surprising suggestions,
its crazy imperatives, its shouts and murmurs. This was my outlook in selecting
the works for exhibition, and especially in awarding the prizes." Harry
Cooper
Outstanding Painting Award
Society of Arts and Science International Contemporary Painting Competition
Science Art Society, Jamaica Plain, MA
ART EDUCATION
1999 - 2005 Personal study with Bernd Haussmann.
1973 - 1976 Boston University Bachelor of Fine Arts. Painting Program
1970 - 1972 Dean Jr. College, Associate in Science. Visual Arts program.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
As a child Deborah Bohnert lived with her American parents for many years in Japan. She was raised there also by Yoshiko, a kind Japanese woman who impressed upon her the culture of Japan and the importance of being mindful of the environment. When her family moved back to America, they lived in many different places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Georgia. Now she lives on the coast of New England with her husband and two cats.
She graduated from Boston University in the Fine Arts Painting Program in 1972 and began extensive training in Gillean Therapy at the Cambridge Psychotherapy Institute. She combined these experiences to bring art therapy to jails, alternative schools,
mental institutions, etc. Then in 1977 she began a private practice in psychotherapy, which she continues today.
In 1999, she began studying art with Bernd Haussmann, the German/American Abstract painter who greatly reinforced Deborah's deep conviction of the importance of art and nature being connected in the world.
Her experience of being a psychotherapist (studying man) and her intense study of nature through observation, meditation and art has confirmed her strong belief that everything is a product of nature.
In all of her work, Deborah Bohnert forms organic structures, evocative of the interconnection of events in nature, expressing the process -- the evolution. Whether she is working with stacking layers of translucent paint on plexiglass or creating vessles with fiberglass and paint or forming sculptures from latex or painting on canvas, her primary concern is to convey a deep connection to nature.
Her work has been shown in numerous museums, galleries and has won many awards. For example, at the Florence Griswold Museum, the exhibition The American River. Out of 1,600 entries she was awarded first prize for her piece "1024 Days" by Carl Belz, Curator Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum; Jeff Rosenheim, Assistant Curator of Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Linda Simmons, Curator Emeritus of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Harry Cooper, Curator of Modern Art at Fogg Art Museum said, "Your work seems to be exploring the line between sculpture and painting in a remarkable way."
When he awarded her Best of Show he said, "Technique is crucial in making art. But what is it? Is it the power to make materials do exactly what you want? Or is it the ability to establish a dialogue with them, to let them use you a much as vice versa? This second kind of mastery is not easy to come by. To get it you have to acquire the first kind (at least partly) and then let it go. In fact, it is less mastery than a level of comfort with the medium, a receptivity to its surprising suggestions, its crazy imperatives, its shouts and murmurs. This was my outlook in selecting the works for exhibition, and especially in awarding the prizes.
Finally, Laura Heon, Curator Mass MoCA said "This is beautiful work and I am impressed by your creative and masterful use of materials."
CONTACT INFORMATION
Deborah Bohnert, 18 Waldron Court, Marblehead, MA 01945 781-639-8400
or send a message by signing my guestbook