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Sculptor, Educator ⚔️ Founder of “Together, Tacit” ♾️. Grateful for students❤️Proud cat mom of the furwonder Matt Olson and I call Louise Bourgeois 🐈

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I am beyond fortunate to work with so many outstanding students that put their heart and soul into making art, especially in very concerning times. This semester, I teach a class called The Body ( Issues & Objects) and one project is titled “The Engendered Body”, which asked students to examine Hélio Oiticica’s Parangolé and interpret it in their own way. The idea was to make a flexible skin that collaborated with their body and spoke to their identity or overall work.

Here is the result. This class consists of undergraduate and graduate students. Just wow. Sound up, please 🔊

#grateful
@psu_sova
@psuartsarch @sculptureatpsu

Image 1,2: Neysha Lugo Davilla ⭐️
Image 3,4: Debra Fleury @debra_fleury ⭐️
Image 5. MacKenzie Leitzell @kenzieleitzell ⭐️
Image 6,7: Klarissa Hillegass @klarissa_hillegass ⭐️
Image 8,9: Bianca MacPherson @macpherson.ceramics⭐️
Image 10/11: Jesse Plass @jessesohandsomeplassofficial ⭐️
Image 12/13: Erika Satoko Port @erikasatokoport ⭐️
Image 14/15: Elise Doucet @elisefdoucetart ⭐️ by @bonniecollura

Thrilled that the “Together, Tacit” project has been included in “Re-Imagining the Visual Arts”, a podcast on Lighthouse Guild’s “On Tech & Vision”. In this episode, Dr. Cal Roberts, President of the Lighthouse Guild, talks with the State Tactile Museo Omero in Italy, an all touch museum that was created by two blind people, a senior product designer in imaging who discusses emerging technology by QD laser and Sony Electronics that can scans an image directly on a retina as a type of view finder for people with don’t have access to central vision. This helps them see and take photographs. It also highlights the assistive technologies that painter and make-up that artist Emily Metauten @herminiablue uses, and shares the origin and development of “Together, Tacit”. Just wow. I am so grateful. 💐💐❤️❤️❤️🗑️
Link in bio
@lighthouseguild
#grateful
#togethertacit
@psuartsarch
@pennstateengineering by @bonniecollura

Many thanks to reporter Maxine Rose of CBS21, a
Harrisburg news station, for meeting with me to discuss the “Together, Tacit” project ♾️💙. The story their team made aired on the 11:00 news last night- grateful for their interest in what we are doing. 💐✨Big thanks to Katie Johnson, PR specialist, Penn State Strategic Communications for sharing this work with Maxine💙

The full web story, crediting @pennstate , @psuartsarch @pennstateengineering, @psudigifab @clovernookcenter @cincycac @lauralee.shaffer and Fred Neurohr❤️ is linked in my bio.
#togethertacit #AccessibleArt #letsgo by @bonniecollura

Happy to show three recent drawings alongside super work by Arjan Zazueta @arjanzazueta ⭐️Jason Dunda @jasondunda ⭐️and Andreas Fischer @ankeny13 ⭐️ in “Kind of Representational” at @heavengallerychicago . ✨✨✨✨

The show opens this Friday (Sept 25) and is on view through November 15. An artist talk is on October 17 🌸If you are in Chicago, please stop by! Press release:

“Relative to the sense of truth iconic signification still seems to produce, abstraction can be seen as a kind of fiction rooted in a diversion of material, process, touch, and indexing of thinking and psycho-social positioning, among other things. When mixed with likeness, abstraction, in this sense, can push away from the attentiveness to the points of referential origin that likeness demands. Abstraction adds other energies, motivations, thoughts, calculations, and impulses that extend, challenge, and complicate what likeness does. It’s like making stuff up, while re-telling a story, in order to add interesting new possibilities (humorous or shocking exaggeration, for example), which often needs to come at the expense of the integrity of the original event.

The artists in “Kind of Representational” deliberately position their work in the middle of a similar tension between likeness and facture. Each of their practices relies on a mixture of either ruins of likeness, suggesting a catabolic and critical process; or building blocks of likeness, suggesting an anabolic and exploratory process; or combinations of both. They all mix these elements with, or disrupt with, large doses of abstraction. The resulting works are often uncanny, but pull us into important new experiences.”

“Study for Smite” 2026 (27.25 x 21.25 X.5 inches- framed)
“Study for Seven Bust” 2026 (27.25 x 21.25 X.5 inches- framed)
“Burden” 2026 ( 27.25 x 21.25 X.5 inches- framed) by @bonniecollura

A walk through of a collection of in progress pieces I call portals. Each on is a purposeful mash; some have parts of past sculptures I cut or dismantled .Others use deconstructed elements from my parent’s former home. When stacking, I am thinking of cairns, balancing, weight, and how finding placement between one surface and another can be a type of memorial.

Still a lot to do to make them cohesive.
I had them interspersed through my studio and it was hard to get a sense of them as a group. This helps.

#portals #wip #contemporarysculptures by @bonniecollura

$Twisted Flower” 2026, repurposed fabrics, thread, jewelry, foam batting, ceramic. This textile is in response to one of my mother’s embroideries made in 2020. As some friends know, my mother is self-taught in embroidery, specifically crewel embroidery. Until recently, my mother embroidered all throughout my life. After my father’s death and her need to downsize into an assisted living community, I became the guardian of over 60 embroideries she crafted. This is a fraction of her life’s work, as she gave most away in her young life. My mother is now in memory care. After a shoulder dislocation in November 2025 pulled her away from her daily routine, her understanding for how to embroider vanished. There are too many things that dementia takes from her. Perhaps, her ability to express herself with needlecraft is one of the most heartbreaking for me to come to terms with. I have not, and likely will not. “Twisted Flower” is one of six textile works I will be making in response to embroideries made between 1970- 2025 in a show called “Unconditional”. It will exhibit at the HUB Gallery @hubrobesongalleries at Penn State University and open in September 2028. A collection of her legacy embroideries will be on view and the 20 works done between December 2024- November 2025 – the transition between assisted living and memory care. As her dementia deepened, her stitching became looser and abstract, always an evidential tactile mark of how her mind was selecting/editing/shaping. A catalogue will be made and I am hoping to find a writer who can speak to her craftpersonship in relation to the history of embroidery, and someone related to neuroscience that can speak to her evolving needlecraft as a document of her brain changing. Because it is unlikely she will have any understanding of the what the show is by 2028, I am trying to make some works early so I can transport the pieces to her memory care facility- so she can see their relationship while she still has a window to relate. Love you, Mom. ❤️ by @bonniecollura$

it’s the best time of the month again! i get to share another artist with you all!💌🪲

august’s postcard club featured artist is @bonniecollura 🥳🌟

Bonnie Collura is an award-winning artist and educator whose mixed media sculptures have contributed to the dialogue of contemporary art across the globe. Her work investigates the body as a corporal, social, and spiritual entity. At times, the body is sculpted as a figurative portrait. Other times, abstraction is used to present the body as a spatial form. In social works, people who perceive the world differently are pulled together to redefine visualization. In all approaches, preconvention of wholeness morph between vulnerability and uprise to render a body in-between: physical towards metaphysical, virtual towards tangible; individualistic towards communal.

Holding a BFA from VCU (1994) and a MFA from Yale (1996), Collura is the recipient of sizeable honors, including a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a 2021 Outstanding Educator Award from the International Sculpture Center. Her transdisciplinary project, “Together, Tacit” inspires creative collaboration among blind, low vision and sighted individuals. This was selected for the 2024 Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts & Humanities from Penn State University. Collura is a Professor of Art at Penn State. She lives and works in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania with her husband, Matthew J. Olson and their fabulous cat.

for more information & to see more of Collura’s work, please check out her instagram page @bonniecollura and website bonniecollura.com

place postcard club orders by August 7th to receive Bonnie’s edition!!🌞

#smallbusiness #supportartists #printshop #mailclub #artistssupportingartists by @bonniecollura

Honored to be included in the inaugural exhibition at The Universal Arts Teaching Gallery (UATG) @universalarts_rva ⭐️⭐️

launched in Shockoe Bottom, Richmond, founded by artists I greatly admire- Heide Trepanier @heidetrepanier , Ed Trask @edtrask and Matt Lively @mattlively
The show opens tomorrow May 23 (4-7) so if you are in Richmond, please stop by. I will be exhibiting a piece made in 2018 called Guardian Blue, which is one of four color codes (spiritual life forces) in the Prince Project. Guardian Blue was my first quilted figurative sculpture; it is sewn from repurposed fabrics donated or found in central pa. The piece was previously shown at Smack Mellon (2019) and Hallwalls (2023). I am fond of this piece and so glad it will be among friends in a city I have good memories in❤️

Universal Arts Teaching Gallery has a mission I respect and admire. Thank you Heide ⚔️, Ed ⚔️, and Matt ⚔️❤️❤️ for your time, energy, and advocacy!

“Universal Arts is a nonprofit art gallery and educational center dedicated to advancing equitable access to visual arts and humanities education, with a focus on painting, drawing, and the humanities. Through inclusive classes, workshops, humanities-based learning, and exhibitions, including regularly presented group shows the gallery supports regional and emerging artists, fosters critical thinking and creative growth, and strengthens community engagement throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. Universal Arts is committed to artist advocacy, championing fair compensation, ethical exhibition practices, and the collective power of artists to organize, negotiate, and define the terms of their creative labor. “ by @bonniecollura

Reliquary (pre molding/ casting). The clay bust is about 28 inches tall, a larger scale for me.

Post cast, it will be painted an orange to white ombré. Or so I think right now 🟠⚪️⛓️ by @bonniecollura

“Head for Golden Droid” 2026), is one of two works I am donating for the International Sculpture Center’s upcoming, Night of Excellence Gala ( May 1). Both works will be available for sale at the Gala event and on the ISC’s website through the month of June.

The Gala will honor 2026 lifetime achievement in contemporary sculpture recipients Carole Feuerman and Mary Miss, with Jackie Ferrara honored in memoriam, Danielle Julian Norton, recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Educator Award, Mariana Noreña, recipient of the 2025 Innovator Award, and the 2025 Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award Recipients.

The @intsculpturectr long standing support for sculptors, educators, and students is something I have deep appreciation and respect for. In 2021, I was extremely fortunate to receive their outstanding educator award, sharing this distinction with the phenomenal sculptor and educator Foon Sham 🌹.
In October 2022, they put my pandemic era work “No Way Out but Through” on their cover and included an interview with me by Ann Landi that helped articulate how teaching, advocating, and sculpting are intertwined processes for me. I believe everyone is inherently creative and poised to position creativity outwards. IMHO, where contemporary art fails is when it boxes people out and the perception of what is creative becomes narrowly defined. To unlock empowered creativity, most simply need another to show them that they matter ⚔️, accessible gateways to locate their power ✅, and encouragement on how to translate creative thinking with others ( irrespective of domain). I also think everyone (!) is a sculptor (!), as we all can change the tenor of space by how we treat each other. Your tool is you; built in.⚔️

Their 2022 article helped me share that parallel.

“Head for Golden Droid” is 21.5 inches tall x 12 inches wide x 12.5 inches deep. It is signed and has a custom sewn form that the hollow cast rests on. It was from the 2019 sculpture “Golden Droid/ Scout/ C3PO” in the show “Prince” at Smack Mellow. DM for price, or contact the @intsculpturectr

#internationalsculpturecenter
#ISCDay
#bonniecollura
@intsculpturectr
@psuartsarch by @bonniecollura

Recent small portrait I originally started for a class demonstration and then continued to work on in my studio.

“Get Well and a Good, Good”. 2026.
Wood, floral foam, epoxy putty, matrix dryve, paint, flocking, jewelry.
18 inches tall x 5.5 inches wide x 6 inches deep
💕🌸💕 by @bonniecollura

Bonnie Collura

@bonniecollura