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PERSONAL LANDSCAPES

by Bonnie Bucknam

January 18 – April 5, 2020

Bonnie Bucknam has been sewing and making art since early childhood.  In high school she launched a successful mail order business manufacturing fabric purses. Since then she has always made art to enjoy and market. Bonnie grew up in Long Beach, California and graduated from California State University Long Beach with a degree in Anthropology and Geology.  Shortly thereafter, she moved to Alaska.  She worked as an archaeologist and warehouseman building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. She remained in Alaska for 31 years, spending most of those working as a legal assistant at the Alaska Attorney General’s Office in Anchorage.  She always used every “spare” minute to create fiber art. She attended numerous quilting, design, fabric dyeing, and painting classes and studied extensively with Nancy Crow. In 1997 she started a business, Handwerk, to market her quilts and hand-dyed fabrics.  In 2006, Bonnie retired from legal work and relocated to Vancouver, Washington, where, as a fiber artist and painter, she now creates art full-time.

Bonnie Bucknam’s abstract compositions are inspired by the colors and shapes of the natural world.  Bonnie’s work Crater won Best of Show at Quilt National 2011. She has also exhibited in Visions San Diego, Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York, and numerous times in the biennial Earth, Fire, and Fibre exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.  In 2016, Bonnie was part of the invitational curated by Nancy Crow, Mastery: Sustaining Momentum. In 2015 Bonnie’s work was in a year-long solo exhibition at the Portland Oregon International Airport. Bonnie was part of the solo artist series at the Anchorage Museum in 1995, in Quilts: Stitching a New Tradition.  Internationally, Bonnie’s work has appeared in the Haus der Wirtschaft museum in Stuttgart, Germany, the Museum of Modern Art in Verona, Italy, and other venues in Germany, England, Ireland, France, Japan, Brazil, and the Netherlands.  In 2015 Bonnie had her first solo show of mixed media paintings at the Second Story Gallery in Camas, Washington. Bonnie’s work Tangle is part of the permanent collection of the Tuch + Technik Textilmuseum, Neumunster, Germany.  She has work in the Patchwork Design Contemporaneo Collection in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the State of Alaska’s Art Bank.

Click here for the gallery guide.