Lorraine Bonner is a self-taught ceramic sculpture artist whose work reveals the interfusion of personal and political trauma and healing. She began working in clay in her early forties, in response to the recovery of early childhood trauma memories. She eventually began working almost exclusively with the clay body known as Obsidian (Aardvark), which fires to a satin black finish, unglazed at cone 5 oxidation. 

In her “Perpetrator” series, the black clay represents not only herself, but all humans whose lives are stolen for the profit of a few. In many of these sculptures the “perpetrator” is represented by a white porcelain clay. The perpetrator is defined as one who betrays a trust, and this series deals explicitly with betrayals of trust that range from interpersonal violence to war.

Another series, Multi-Hued Humanity, investigates the possibility of a future world in which skin color is seen as a non-value-laden variation among humans, using clay bodies of different shades of brown. In this series Black is redeemed from its association with evil and contamination, and restored to its rightful place as an archetype as powerful and essential as White.

Her most recent work is prophetic, an installation as well as individual sculptures based on the theme of Extinction. The work shown in this exhibition, Grief, is a representation of a normal, if overwhelming, emotional response to the unimaginable loss toward which we are hurtling. At this time, it is not clear if we, the species responsible for this planetary catastrophe, will be able to make the necessary changes in time to restore balance to our world. Art bears some responsibility to bring these changes about, along with science, education and a restoration of heart, the innate human capacity to care for one another.

In this focus on Extinction, Bonner returns to the earliest themes of her work. The Perpetrators, now renamed “Devourers,” are to be seen for what they are. Those of us represented by Obsidian must find ways to free ourselves from a hierarchy enforced by violence, and recover new/old ways of living and problem solving together. 

We cannot do this without willingness to look at and feel the hardest things imaginable.

Bonner lives and works in Oakland, California, close to her children and grandchildren.