Deborah Bohnert

1952 - 2020

Deborah Bohnert


Resume

Selected Exhibitions
Publications & Reviews
Awards & Honors
Biography

Deborah Bohnert
Marblehead and Gloucester, MA


Performance Art

2010   Mobius: Performance Art of Installation, We Are All Flowers

2010   Carney Gallery, Regis College Performance Art, Untitled #12 Evolved

2009*   Brush Art Gallery Performance piece of Untitled #12

2007*   Danforth Museum of Art

2007*   Brush Art Gallery

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

(* solo or two person exhibitions)

2018*   No Beginning NoEnding, Installation Trident Gallery, Gloucester, MA

2015-2019*   Project Space 44 Main, Gloucester, MA

2012*   Walk Into My Heart, Installation, Front Street, Marblehead

2011   The Schoolhouse Gallery, Spring Competition

2011   Danforth Museum of Art: Community of Artists
Katherine French, Director of The Danforth Museum

2011 The BigTown Gallery, Rochester, Vermont: The Small Wall

2010   Lesley University Marran Gallery , The Art of Healers

2010   Danforth Museum of Art: Off The Wall
Co-juried by Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, Jen Mergel, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts

2010   The Schoolhouse Gallery, Spring Competition, curated by Vicky Tomayko

2010   Mobius, Experimental Alternative Flower Show, Installation, curator Cathy Nolan Vincevic

2010   Carney Gallery, Regis College The Art of Healing/The Art of Psychotherapists, Jean Winslow

2009   Brush Art Gallery, The Art of Healing/The Art of Psychotherapists, Jean Winslow

2009   Danforth Museum of Art: Community of Artists, Katherine French, Director of The Danforth Museum

2008   A.I.R. Gallery, NYC: Generations 6, Invitational Exhibition of Small Works

2007*   Trustman Art Gallery: Spinning Straw Into Gold, Ethics of Production
Curated by Barbara O'Brien, Director Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College

2007   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

2007   Brush Art Gallery: Massachusetts Artists 2007 Jurors Prize
Curated by Raphaela Platow Curator, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University

2007   Danforth Museum of Art: Community of Artists, Katherine French, Director of The Danforth Museum

2006 * Montserrat College of Art Solo Exhibition: Out of the Ordinary
Curated by Leonie Bradbury Gallery Director, Curator Montserrat College

2006   Attleboro Arts Museum: Small Works Exhibition
Juried by Katherine French, Director, Danforth Museum and Nancy Whipple Grinnell, Curator, Newport Art Museum

2006 * BigTown Gallery, Rochester, Vermont: Contemporary Portraiture

2006   A.I.R. Gallery, NYC: 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).

2006   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

2005   Peabody Essex Museum: In Nature's Company -- October 2004 - September 2005

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.

2005   Griffin Museum of Photography: 1th National Juried Exhibition
Juried by Andy Grundberg

2004 * Fort Point Gallery, Boston: Skin: Two person show
Juried Barbara O'Brien, Executive Director, Art New England and Curated by Bernd Haussmann

2004   Attleboro Museum: 6th Annual Small Works Honorable Mention
Juried by Dorothy Simpson Krause, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art

2003   Florence Griswold Museum: The American River Best of Show
Juried by Carl Belz, Curator Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum

2001   Cambridge Art Association: Red, Best of Show
Juried by Harry Cooper, Curator of Modern Art, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

PUBLICATIONS and REVIEWS

Artscope Magazine, June 2012
Review by James Foritano Walk Into My Heart

ArtThrob Magazine, June 2012
Eyewitness: Walk Into My Heart(north shore art*throb) Marblehead artist Deborah Bohnert opens up her mind, memories, and studio to the public in her newest installation entitled "Walk Into My Heart."

Studio Visit, Volume Six 2009
The juror Michael Klein Independent Curator and Private Dealer

Artscope Magazine, November 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."

The Boston Globe, November 2007
Lush by Cate McQuaid
"This tangy, gorgeous, funny exhibit highlights the talents of two artists who spin froth out of nightmares. Bohnert positions found objects such as toys in front of abstract paintings, which are in themselves bright objects straddling childrens'-party pep and ragged decay. The pairings (as in "The Little Fruits#35a", right) are comic, provocative, and visually resonant."

Studio Visit, Volume Two 2008 (The Little Fruits)
Carl Belz, Director Emeritus The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis for the Fall Edition of Studio Visit Magazine
- a new series of juried artist books published by "Open Studios Press"

Studio Visit Volume One 2007 (The Little Fruits)
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.."

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


Selected AWARDS and HONORS

Nominated for the James and Audrey Foster Prize
Though I wasn't picked as a finalist, I was honored to be nominated for the James and Audrey Foster prize. The Institute of Contemporary Art looks to a broad network of local and national colleagues to identiry eligible artists for the prize.

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."

Best Of Show
Brush Art Gallery, Massachusetts Artists 2007 by Raphaela Platow Curator, Rose Art Museum

The Aperture Award
The Print Center: 80th Annual International Competition: Photography,
Juror, Stephen Pinson, Curator, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library

Honorable Mention
Attleboro Museum, Attleboro, MA, 6th Annual Small Works . Juried by Simpson Krause, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art

Honorable Award
Gallery on the Green, Canton CT.
4th Annual National Small Works. Juried by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Director of Curatorial Affairs at Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park

Best Of Show
Cambridge Art Association, Red, 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

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. She lived on the coast of New England with her husband and two cats for many years.

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 continued throughout her life.

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 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 Plexiglas or creating vessels 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."



© 2000 - 2020. Deborah Bohnert. All rights reserved.