Bonnie Crawford Kotula
April 7-30, 2017
Versions
Bonnie Crawford Kotula is not interested in, nor does she believe in a world that makes sense. For her, concept is process. She conducts idiosyncratic research making connections across historical medical texts, body horror films, poetry, fiction, political discourse, and her own personal history. She researches results in further inquiry rather than clarity or a discernible thesis; following a thread, it leads to a plate of spaghetti. This approach informs her choice of materials and formal considerations when making art.
Crawford Kotula create sculptures, installations, and drawings using a combination of fine art materials, cheap craft supplies, and semi-scientific equipment. This exhibition will feature bodies of work: Light Emitting Studies incorporate tiny blinking electrical circuits that respond to the environment, Viewfinders is comprised of small hand-held souvenir scopes containing three-dimensional assemblages. Additionally, the exhibition will feature small drawings inspired by the Insomnia Drawings of Louise Bourgeois. Often awake in the middle of the night, she draws by the light of her phone and then photographs the drawings against the backdrop of her bed sheets using the phone’s camera. The images and objects that result from her practice represent a deliberately poetic and tender psuedo-science that further obscures the specificity of experience.
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A fourth generation South Carolinian, Bonnie Crawford Kotula now lives and works as a sculptor in Baltimore. She became interested in using electrical circuitry as an art material when a problem with the electrical tissue in her own heart required surgery. She received her MFA from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2008 and her BA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland College Park in 2001.
