I thought it might be a good place to start a blog by paying homage to the origins of our approach. My father Don Bonham 1940-2014 was a sculptor and I grew up in a world of artists, poets, musicians and a myriad of creative individuals.
My father did not come from a creative background, he grew up in rural Oklahoma in a somewhat less than idyllic childhood. When troubles arose as a teen he enlisted in the Marine Corp. There he found a home that made sense to him and he rose to become a recon and toured through southeast Asia. During this time his interest in Art and Art history were fueled by the books my mother would send him. As he returned to the States he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma with studies in Art history. There he would meet influential Architects such as Bruce Goff and other disciples of Frank Loyd Wright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Goff in addition to studying under the esteemed art historian Cecil lee. It was at this point that sculpture became his lifelong pursuit.
By 1969 he was drawn to Southeastern Ontario Canada, specifically London where a thriving art scene had appeared. Here he found a community that was thriving artistically and forging new ground aesthetically. In the early 1970's my father was creating racing machines that morphed the human torso into the design. He was fascinated with our love of machines and the implicit designs that unconsciously emulated the human body. While his machines did not work mechanically they were convincing. Always pushing the boundaries of staid art my father created a fictitious racing team called the Hermen Goode Aesthetics Racing Team (note A.R.T.) In an early example of performance art he produced three short films about the adventures of his alter egos in the Aesthetics Racing Team. See the films here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNMw3MPwqP1cN5nAWktDtkA
By the 1980's he had moved his studio first to Montreal then to Tallahassee and finally to Toronto. In each location production continued in addition to teaching sculpture at the university level. He had always longed to build a studio that was truly his own and in the 1990's he and his wife Lisa moved to upstate New York where he built his dream studio. He continued to work in the studio producing art till his final days. In 2012 he was honored with a lifetime retrospective at The Beaverbrook
See his work here http://donbonham.com
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