Bonnie Lynch: Vessels

The vessel openings are never abrupt, but are integral to the overall form. The rims are sometimes as thin and fragile as ripped paper, and are often articulated with a small border. They permit views into the dark interiors, impressive volumes, calm and enigmatic. Lynch has continued to refine her vessels by sharpening the edges, altering openings, increasing the sizes or reducing the bases—only slowly adding new shapes to her vocabulary.

Major sources of inspiration and intrigue for Lynch are objects from ancient, foreign cultures. In particular, she admires African ceremonial objects, especially those objects made of clay and wood and covered with resins, mud and “sacrificial” materials. Small Egyptian pots made of marble and holding traces of pigments and other remnants also interest her. Forms in nature, such as beetle shells, cocoons, seed pods, stones and bones, further provoke her imagination.

One of the most beautiful objects Lynch recalls ever seeing was a small, spherical clay pot with a fragile disc as its lid, that had been found in Mexico, just south of Marfa. The exterior was the color of dry, pale dirt, and it looked as if it would crumble if touched. Inside, the pot held charred bone shards and turquoise beads. Another vessel embedded in her memory is a large, plump, black ovoid pot, also with a disc-shaped lid, that had been found filled with dried corn kernels and, at the very bottom, two smooth, small black stones from the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings. Both of these pieces were functional vessels that “had purpose, but held mysteries” for Lynch.

Not surprisingly, Lynch appreciates all types of creative works that generate an altered state of awareness, and especially those that evoke a reminder that life is a synthesis of the duality of the physical and the spiritual. Of contemporary art, she admires Richard Serra’s work for its sublime physical presence and scale, and Louise Bourgeois’s for its use of “raw” materials that possess a strong purpose but retain a great sense of mystery. She is also drawn to the ethereal light and spaciousness of James Turrell’s work, which is suggestive to her of the space in West Texas.