Bonnie Lucas with a collage that will be featured in her upcoming show at Esopus Space - photo by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

“Everything that’s happening to me has everything to do with me teaching children,” Bonnie Lucas tells me, beaming.  We’re standing in her fifth-floor walk-up in Little Italy (now known to some as NoLita) where she has lived for over 30 years.  It’s the classic unrenovated tenement layout you don’t see much anymore – two rooms, 400 square feet, with the bathtub in the kitchen.  It’s also Bonnie’s studio.  She covers the bathtub with a fitted piece of metal to create her work bench, where for the last three decades she’s created a vast array of collages, paintings and assemblages.