Jill Bonovitz: Drawing on Air

Through April 21, 2002


Jill Bonovitz, Untitled, 2001. Wire and juniper berries, 10 x 6”. Photo by Thomas Brummett. Courtesy of the artist.

Consistently working within the boundaries of the vessel, Philadelphia-based artist Jill Bonovitz creates original designs and unearths new meaning in her artwork by paying close attention to art history. In the past, Bonovitz's ceramic work has been informed by ancient Mimbres, Greek, Native American and pre-Columbian Peruvian pottery. More recently, however, she has been looking at Abstract Expressionism and a number of untrained "outsider" artists, such as Eugene Von Bruenchenhein.

As she continues her investigation into language and line, Bonovitz's exhibition in ICA's Project Space will continue to use the vessel form, describing the pieces in this exhibition as "drawings with wire". The results are fragile, ethereal baskets that are bathed in the light and shadows. Although these pieces are in a different medium, they are suggestive of the visual vocabulary that the artist has developed over her twenty-five year career.

Bonovitz received her BS from Columbia University and later attended Moore College of Art and Design. In 1999 she received the Leeway Foundation Grant for Excellence awarded to Artists in Sculpture and Three-Dimensional Craft. Her work can be seen in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, American Craft Museum, New York, Contemporary Museum, Hawaii and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Funding support has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation Inc., the Board of Overseers for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of the ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. (Information complete as of 2/1/02.)


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