Archive for month: March, 2020

During the month of March, the Whatcom Museum will highlight five women artists whose work is featured in our collection. The project is inspired by the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ “Can you name #5WomenArtists?” campaign. Read this final piece in the series to learn about artist Bonnie MacLean.

Bonnie MacLean – early years

Bonnie MacLean was born in Philadelphia in 1939 and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. She attended Penn State University, graduating with a degree in French in 1961.

After college, MacLean moved to New York City. While there, she started taking drawing classes at the Pratt Institute in the evenings. Then, in 1963, MacLean moved to San Francisco. It’s there that her art career would get its start.

Upon arriving in San Francisco, MacLean started an office job at Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. There, she met her future husband Bill Graham, who would go on to become a noted concert promoter. When Graham left to work for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, MacLean went with him.

There, the couple worked together to promote concerts, often at the Fillmore Auditorium. According to a Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco web page, MacLean initially handled administrative tasks such as obtaining permits. At the time, posters with “psychedelic” lettering were used to promote some of the concerts.

One of the primary poster designers was Wes Wilson. When Wilson and Graham had a falling out in 1967, Bonnie MacLean stepped in to design posters.

Her work

MacLean designed more than 30 posters for the Fillmore. She quickly developed her own style, incorporating gothic elements and drawing faces and figures.

The New York Times describes her work at the time as standing “with the best of psychedelic poster art.”

“If she is sometimes left off the list of pioneering poster artists from that moment in time, it is in part because that world was dominated by men and in part, as she acknowledged, because her output and tenure were limited,” the article states.

MacLean designed posters until 1971.

The Whatcom Museum has a selection of MacLean’s poster prints in our collection. Among them are The Who, Loading Zone, 1967; Eric Burdon and the Animals, Mother Earth, Hour Glass, 1967; and The Yardbirds, The Doors, 1967.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York also has the prints in its collection.

Her work has been shown in multiple venues, including the Whitney and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Later in life, after divorcing Graham and remarrying, MacLean developed a career as a fine art painter focusing on landscapes and nudes.

Bonnie MacLean died on Feb. 4, 2020, at the age of 80.

Sources: Bahr Gallery website, The New York Times, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco web page, The Key

During the month of March, the Whatcom Museum is highlighting five women artists whose work is featured in our collection. The project is inspired by the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ “Can you name #5WomenArtists?” campaign. Read on to learn more about artist Susan Bennerstrom.

Susan Bennerstrom – the early years

Bellingham-based artist Susan Bennerstrom’s love of art started early. “It’s really all I ever wanted to do,” she recalls. Born in Seattle in 1949, Bennerstrom drew inspiration from her grandmother, an artist working in Chicago. “She was my hero and role model. She showed it was possible to be both a woman and active artist.”

In 1967, she enrolled at Western Washington University in Bellingham to study art. She completed three-and-a-half years before deciding to drop out and hitchhike through Europe pursuing her other passion, travel.

“It was a great art education,” she recalls of the trip. “All the art history I’d been studying came alive.”

After returning to the U.S., Bennerstrom got married and moved to Berkeley, California. She says her intention was to continue her art education, but the young couple couldn’t take on the financial burden. Instead, she got a job and continued to make art as a hobby. She considered being a ceramic artist or weaver before fully immersing herself in chalk pastels.

It wasn’t until her return to Bellingham in 1975 that she embraced 2-D works. Then, in the late 1980s, she began to show her pastel work in Seattle, gaining recognition for her art exploring and depicting light.

Her career

Bennerstrom’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Whatcom Museum. Her piece Haystacks in Balkan Landscape was previously on view in Show of Hands and Just Women. She has also had two solo shows at the Museum, most recently a 2002 retrospective titled Existing Light.

Throughout her career, Susan Bennerstrom has received numerous awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Award in 2004. Of her accolades, she describes the Ballinglen Art Foundation Fellowship, a two-and-a-half-month residency in Ireland, as a highlight.

“The landscape was shockingly beautiful,” she recalls. “There was very dramatic light.”

Light has always played a role in her art. Today, Bennerstrom says she places more emphasis on light as the subject of her work rather than place.

“I rarely put figures in my paintings, as I find that they tend to take over; I prefer to let light and shadow imply the narrative and carry the emotional weight,” she states on her website.

In addition to focusing more on light itself, Bennerstrom’s tools have also changed over the years. In 2008, she moved from chalk pastels to oil paint. She credits local artist Barbara Sternberger with inspiring her to move away from messy, less portable chalk.

She also recently checked a goal off her list – finishing her degree at Western. “I didn’t need a degree, but I wanted it,” she says. So, nearly 50 years later, she returned to Western to complete her last class. She graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Art in December 2018.

Today, her recent works draw inspiration from the light in Morocco. They are set to be shown at the Woodside Braseth Gallery in Seattle. Her work will also appear in Anatomy of a Collection, an upcoming exhibition at the Whatcom Museum.