Bonnie Kassel has spent many years living and studying abroad. Sketches done in Mayan jungle temples, Ethiopian Coptic churches and the houses of Pompeii present a powerful influence in her work. She has collaborated with architects, interior designers and art consultants in the United States and overseas for more than 20 years. During this time she has built a solid reputation for her consideration of deadlines and budgets. Bonnie currently resides in New York City.
While doing research for her thesis on weaving in the villages of Guatemala, Bonnie met a group of archaeologists who hired her to sketch unrecorded graffiti in Mayan jungle tombs. Drawing alone by the light of candles, Bonnie says she felt a connection to all the people before her who had made images by firelight. The play of the light along a surface and the desire to capture the durability and permanace of stone led directly to the adoption of metal as her principal working material. She began to feel it was possible to translate the historical arts she was studying.
Ms. Kassel’s ability to quickly pick up the language wherever she happens to be mirrors her ability to absorb the visual vocabulary around her. After a year in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, she boarded a boat to Mombassa and parts west. A further desire to study cultures and arts at a grass roots level led her to embark on a two-year journey driving from Cairo to Capetown, crossing the Sahara. The forms and faces of these myriad places contributed significantly to the personal vocabulary of the artist. The blazing saffron silks and copper markets have arranged her palette and have remained a source of inspiration throughout the artist’s career.
Ms. Kassel’s sense of adventure in her personal life has also led to a daring technique in her work. Her need to explore extends from the outside physical world to the materials she has right at hand. Thus the ikats of Indonesia became woven metal panels and the tapa cloth of Tonga are rendered as copper and brass tiles. She has synthesized a new way of creating murals that draw on traditional folk art but which allow for experimentation with the different materials and treatments for a contemporary world.
