BONNIE FERRILL ROMAN

​For 30+ years, I’ve been exploring the possibilities of using handmade-paper (hmp) to create 3D artwork: hmp on and around branch & wire armatures, explorations of surface drawings, watermarks, natural inclusions, & pastel & encaustic techniques, casting hmp around existing 3D forms, sculpting oil-clay to cast with hmp, combining hmp with other materials (such as ceramic forms or hand-drawn PLA forms), & infusing many works with poetry and light. The resulting artwork blends this material exploration and innovation with persistent themes of metamorphosis, fertility and fecundity, the profound mystery of human consciousness arising from our biology, the soul inhabiting matter, and the beauty & underlying patterns found both in natural forms & the structures of human bodies. These ideas arise and play through a growing visual vocabulary that references molecular biology, microscopic creatures and images, cells, veins, neurons, bones, skin, sinew, coral & fungal/lichen forms, & celestial objects. I revel in the ambiguity of micro/macrocosmic congruencies. Several of my enveloping installations are surreal environments for the viewer to move through & become part of. Through casts of my own pregnant body, I have explored intensely personal experiences such as my son’s birth, my mother’s death, and our struggle to conceive a second child that ended in multiple miscarriages. Along the way, I have made forays into digital photo collage and collaborated extensively with several other artists. I have recently begun making acrylic paintings and Gelli-plate prints, creating a new body of abstract 2D works that employ the same visual language to engage in conversation with my earlier work, and I look forward to further discoveries and growth.
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Contact:
www.bonnieferrillroman.com
FB & IG: @bonnie_ferrill_roman_art