This week on The Lo-Down Culture Cast we spoke with artist Bonnie Lucas, who currently has a show at the gallery Trotter&Sholer on Suffolk Street.
Bonnie has been creating intricate assemblages, collages, drawings and paintings that deconstruct the cliches of girlhood for the past five decades.
We first met Bonnie in the early days of The Lo-Down (in 2011!) when she had a show that caught our interest at Esopus Gallery.
Her work is described by Trotter&Sholer as being “focused on feminine themes: domesticity, identity, and childhood. She dismantles feminine objects and reassembles them to new configurations of art.”
The imagery and stories she creates with found objects and material she scavenges from dollar stores seem sweet and child-like at first glance, but upon closer examination reveal the disturbing and often violent experience of girlhood in our American culture.
She’s been gaining slow and steady traction over the decades, with different gallery shows every few years, but the acclaim hasn’t come in ways that would have been expected.
Only recently, she was discovered by a gallery in Portland who showed her work last spring. This fall, she’ll have a solo show at a gallery in Chicago. Let’s hope some overdue recognition is finally in store for Bonnie.
You can see more of her work on her Instagram page here.
Small Worlds is on view at 168 Suffolk St. through March 2nd, 2024.
Watch the full interview on YouTube or listen anywhere you get your podcasts.
