We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bonnie Providence . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bonnie below.
Bonnie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I am currently working towards a solo show for November, titled Providence – what I renamed myself after a flood in Port Providence took my home and I found providence on a difficult path. This new body of work explores how life is seasonal yet identity is intentional. While my foundation was taken from me in an already tenuous time, I have been able to reflect and reconstruct my well-being through a creative practice embedded in and supported by my local artistic community. My life took unexpected turns, yet I am grateful for the clarity I’ve won through its challenges.
I attended art school and obtained a BFA in Printmaking and Art History with the intention of working in a creative field, hoping to find a career at a non-profit connecting community with art, education, and nature. After going through several positions assisting artists temporarily or having my work outsourced because of the turn in the economy, I ended up finding a job in a healthcare company just to have a steady paycheck. I was quickly exhausted and discouraged from pursuing anything creatively fulfilling and after a few years found myself completely disconnected from my art. I put all of my energy into my job and was able to progress steadily to my current position as a financial analyst, even though it left me feeling empty.
The pandemic served as a first opportunity to reflect on where I found myself and what was truly meaningful to me. I was able to shift to working from home and repurpose a room into an office and studio. Painting and printing again was like a salve to my soul for all of the years I didn’t allow myself to make. I started selling masks which reminded me that while I didn’t need to earn a full income through what I made, I felt value and connection in being able to make something that people found value and were excited to purchase. In 2021, I lost my home to a flood that devastated the Mont Claire and Phoenixville communities. I found myself desperately needing to process the events through art without the means that I had built up for myself. In the months following as my mental health took a significant hit I found myself never without my camera or notebook, and painted in remains of my home as I waited for some kind of closure. That practice laid the foundation of my artistic practice and a resurgence of my involvement in the Phoenixville community where I am based.
The Artists of PXV magazine, a local publishing by artist Emily Mullet, had an open call for work around the theme of Home in spring of 2022. My submission was accepted and the validation served as motivation to continue to further develop my visual language and apply to more exhibitions. This past March I had free reign of a local gallery and used the opportunity to put together a body of work with a close friend and photographer, Dani Dimon. Our show pushed the boundaries of collaborative art through photography to explore synchronicity, neurodivergency, and how relationships exist in the times between seeing each other. Collaborative work has always been a way for me to understand and connect with people, and our show ended up starting several new artistic relationships with other local creatives.
While life and the external world are not in my control, I know what I am capable of and can choose what to take from each event. I took a decade long detour, but I now find myself in a position serving my community by hosting artist talks, critiques, and bolstering exhibitions through reviews, and I have a fulfilling artistic outlet that has been received in a way that allows me to feel seen and heard.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am Bonnie Providence, a Phoenixville based artist, craftsperson, and community organizer. I was born with an inquisitive mind and hands that do not stay idle which have led me to constantly be learning and creating. Because my practice has been a life long journey, I have been able to explore many different mediums and my art reflects this – blending analog photography, painting, traditional printmaking techniques, and fibers work. Having a full time career outside of my art has allowed that part of myself to be uncompromised by the need to market work for a certain audience or saleability. It has also freed me to be intentional in the clothes I sell under the brand Bonfire, using fabric purchased from locally owned small businesses or repurposed from vintage materials. Each garment I create strides the line between levels of formality while being comfortable and distinct.
In 2022, I started an organization under the name Art Talks PXV. Phoenixville’s art scene has been in a bit of a Renaissance with opportunities to share work at galleries, shops, and restaurants, and festivals throughout the summer to sell goods. I felt I was looking for something to connect with other local creatives in the times between where we could share ideas and works in progress. Through Art Talks, I facilitate critiques open to all levels that offer a safe space for people to receive feedback and gain new momentum on projects, as well as interviewed artists in their exhibitions and hosted dinner discussions to connect in all parts of the creative lifestyle.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
While I am tempted to say see my answer to the first question, in truth I bristle at the term. “Resilience is a four letter word” is something friends of mine have often heard me counter in conversations about people facing hardship. As someone who has faced challenges both internally by struggling with mental health from a considerably young age (many parts of which can be attributed to an autism diagnosis I wasn’t given until the age of 30), and externally through loss of home, supporting my parents through health challenges, toxic workplace, a deeply unhealthy marriage, deaths of loved ones from illness, accident, and mental health, and the global environmental and societal crisis I have witnessed being a millennial, I have been called resilient on a few occasions.
I know that it is meant as recognition of an admirable quality – the ability to face adversity while staying true to yourself and not let it make you bitter or hardened. I find that too often it is used by people who are ignorant of an individual’s situation or who are unwilling to afford someone the space to grieve, be broken, process the trauma that they experience, or unwilling to put any effort into solving societal issues that cause ongoing struggles for many underserved and underrepresented communities. When something is too hard or too real to acknowledge and we want to stay positive on behalf of someone else, we call them resilient and move on with our lives.
It isn’t that I don’t want people to use “resilient” anymore, I just believe that we would all benefit from pausing for reflection first. Are we saying someone is resilient because they have come out the other side of whatever it is that life has thrown at them, or is there something ongoing that they may need to be supported through?
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
You do not need to make money off of your art to be an artist. You do not need to make art constantly to be an artist.
You do not need to share work on social media or in galleries or with anyone to be an artist.
When I took a detour off of my creative career in order to have a steady income and pay bills, I found myself locked into the idea that if I wasn’t selling work there wasn’t a point in making it. That spiraled into my not having motivation to express myself creatively, and I fell out of practice doing anything with my hands aside from “tickling computers” in an office. Now that I have been involved in my local arts community in Phoenixville and Philadelphia, I am reminded that the part of me that is “artist” isn’t productivity based – it’s the part of my spirit that has the insatiable desire to connect with the world around me through the things I create. My mind shifted little by little through the support of others in what I considered to be small side projects that held no significant weight. Their encouragement gave me the space to make on a larger scale and develop cohesive bodies of work, and now I find myself encouraging others to keep making on whatever level makes them happy.
Contact Info:
- Website: bonnieprovidence.com
- Instagram: BonnieProvidence