| Bonnie Lebesch is an artist, designer
and teacher.
For over 25 years, Bonnie has applied her visual design talents to a
wide variety of projects, beginning in print graphic design and photography,
moving into the fine art medium of video installation, working in the
high-tech field designing and developing interactive content for CD-ROMs,
the internet, software programs and museum exhibits, and in creating
teaching materials and curricula for the professional design software
industry. She has taught at various colleges and universities and has
published original content on CD-ROMs and in books.
Always interested in following new and creative pursuits, Bonnie has
rarely followed a single tangent over her varied and fruitful career.
Rather, she has boldly stepped off the beaten path to follow creative
impulses, often winning acclaim and awards for her efforts. In 1995 she
took a year sabbatical to explore ideas for a children's interactive
musical toy on CD-ROM. In 1997, she released Stella
and the Star-Tones,
winning four national design awards and international acclaim. Her work
with Weatherhead Experience Design Group on the Microcomputer
Museum in Albuquerque, NM won national design awards for the innovative interactive
exhibit Pizza Run, which teaches computer programming logic by directing
a pizza delivery vehicle.
Bonnie has designed and written a series of books titled The
Illuminated Spirit, Illustrated Patterns of Subtle Energy. These drawings and accompanying
text are informed by years of meditative practice and exploration of
subtle states of consciousness and creativity.
The Artist
Bonnie earned an MFA in Video Installation from New York University.
Since then, her creative work has moved away from analog video into digital
photography and media, and was often expressed through commercial projects
such as the Stella CD-ROM. Since 2005, Bonnie has shifted her career
focus more towards exhibiting artwork, and, given her extensive skills
and vast experience in the digital visual field, chose to apply her knowledge
towards digital fine art photography and prints. The
Chinese Medicinal Herb and Formula Series are from this period.
In 2006, Bonnie was chosen to participate in the Artist Trust Edge Program
of professional development for emerging artists.
The Herb Series and the Formula Series are two bodies
of work stemming from an interest in the energetic healing properties
of medicinal plants. With an understanding of eastern philosophy, acupuncture,
and tai chi. Bonnie uses digital photographic montage techniques to depict
the alchemical properties of the plants used in traditional Chinese medicine.
She has also explored working with plants found locally too.
Recently, Bonnie has shifted her art focus to working with paints on
paper. Her interest in nature, healing plants, and subtle energy continues
to inform her new pieces, as seen in the series Lush, inspired
by the abundant and gargantuan growth of flora on the Hawaiian Islands.
After years of intellectual and academic agendas, she is directing her
current focus on a style of doodling which has developed naturally throughout
her life. She finds it satisfying to pursue a practice informed by something
as basic as what she does when she's not paying attention, simply because
when the intellect is put aside, the creative channels are wide open.
Her work is informed by over ten years of tai chi practice.
The Designer
Bonnie Lebesch earned a BFA in Graphic Design and Photography from the
University of Illinois in 1983. She began her career pre-computer, designing
logos, letterheads, and brochures, art directing photo shoots, and putting
herself through graduate school at NYU by doing cut and paste for annual
reports. She has received over ten design awards from AIGA, Print Magazine,
I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, and Typographers International Association.
When the Macintosh was released in 1984, she
remembers drooling over MacPaint and the dot matrix printer. However,
it wasn't until 1992 when she took a contract job at Microsoft's Multimedia
Group that she felt the computer had really arrived. Spending evenings
and weekends at her desk, she taught herself Adobe Photoshop by creating
a deck of playing cards using her own photography, and used Hypercard
to build an interactive card viewer titled 52
Cards.
While at Microsoft, Bonnie designed several interactive CD-ROM titles
including Multimedia Schubert, Multimedia
Strauss, and a secret universe
hidden in the classroom of The Magic School Bus Explores
the Solar System.
The latter became the inspiration for Stella, which she self-published
under the company Bohem Interactive.
When Microsoft's interests moved to developing content for the internet,
she designed several award-winning episodes of MSN's Rifff series, featuring
well-known musical artists such as BB King, Cyndi Lauper, Mark Mothersbaugh,
Mark O'Connor and Corey Glover through interviews and interactive “musicscapes.”
She later worked with some of the same creative team in developing content
for the exhibits of the Microcomputer Museum in Albuquerque. The computer
museum project was of special interest to Bonnie because of her long-standing
interest in the personal computer, Apple's Macintosh, and her work experience
with Microsoft Corporation. Other clients have included The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and Adobe Systems.
The Teacher
With Adobe Systems, Bonnie developed instructional content for user
manuals and web tutorials. This later informed her curriculum development
and teaching for Cornish College of the Arts and Western Washington University.
Earlier in her career, she taught video editing at 911 Media Arts in
Seattle and at Northwest College of Art in Poulsbo, WA.
Bonnie has presented her work at Bellevue Community College, DigiEve
creative conference, Antioch University, and at Ars Electronic Festival
in Austria. She continues to teach workshops and do special presentations. |
