Our March 2026 IWCA Zoom meeting featured IWCA member Bonnie Zimmer, who presented a slide presentation, My Artist’s Journey. Bonnie led us through a retrospective of her life in art, sharing her early experiences and her development as an artist and maker. From the beginning she has been led by her materials. She shared her early investigations into basketry and a trajectory of technique and skill learned and practiced through workshops with established basketry artists and through her own exploration beyond. She found new ideas through the opportunity to go to Japan with a cultural exchange group and to Alaska on a Lilly teacher creativity fellowship. She created projects and installations with other artists and the community, including collaborative mandalas and a Goddess exhibition.
She has been set on a path to use materials at hand, engaging in creative play with found objects, with techniques determined by the objects themselves. Bonnie shared that she had several large black walnut trees felled on their farm property, and the wood, bark and branches became the materials for the Legacies, Guardian Series. Her recent exhibition titles suggest the heart of her practice: Found Objects, New Stories; Contemplating Nature: A Lifelong Journey; and Sublime Reciprocity: Collaborating with Nature.
