Collecting Shadows: Cara Lasell Bonewitz
Cara Lasell Bonewitz, Toaster Arm, papier mâché, plaster, acrylic, 2022
by Rachel Heidenry
Painted interiors. Woven seaweed. Toaster inspired papier-mâché. Ojai-based artist Cara Lasell Bonewitz draws inspiration from organic materials and everyday shapes. Born in Pittsburgh, she and her family moved to Ojai when she was fourteen. After high school, she went back East for college, spending years in New York, before attending graduate school at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. In 2018, she decided she was finished with the gray weather and moved back to Ventura County, setting up a studio in Ojai. Since then, she’s been immersed in the regional arts community, organizing programs like Joyride: Ojai, a socially distanced outdoor exhibition featuring work by local artists in fall 2020.
In her studio, Bonewitz is constantly moving between pieces, sampling different concepts and materials simultaneously. In mediums ranging from installation and fiber to drawing and photography, her works are often labor-intensive undertakings that explore ideas of transience and nostalgia. Regardless of the material, her artwork ponders the question: How do you capture the passing of time?
In a recent exhibition at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara, that question is addressed through a series of paintings, papier-mâché sculptures and watercolors. Titling the exhibition A•BOD•E, Bonewitz explores both the idea of home and the body, thoughtfully detailing the relationships between personal belongings, architecture and the shadows and shapes that inhabit them.
In Mom and Dad’s Closet (mostly Mom’s) (2014), we peer into a personal wardrobe, where a fringed white vest stitched with colorful embroidery and a checkered green jacket hang amid brown coats. In XO (2022), we stare at a bedside table, where stacks of books with red, black and white covers lie beside a lamp missing its shade. And in Summertime in London (2015), we encounter a stairwell, lined with windows casting presumed shadows across the space.
Cara Lasell Bonewitz, Mom and Dad’s Closet (mostly Mom’s), watercolor, 2014
In these paintings of corners, hallways, passageways and closets, Bonewitz captures the intimacy of space. As viewers, we encounter glimpses, our eyes zooming into rooms not fully revealed. Shown in the Architectural Foundation Gallery – a modest, light-filled room in a historic home built in 1904 – the relationship between spaces and those who inhabit them becomes even more pronounced.
But while people are felt throughout Bonewitz’s painted interiors, no bodies are actually depicted. Instead, we encounter remnants: coffee mugs, shoes lined up in a row, a glowing desk lamp, bottles of nail polish. Human activity is felt, not shown, rendering time ambiguous. Has something just happened? Is something about to? By focusing on the seemingly mundane, time feels both frozen and continuous.
Perhaps the works that most strongly capture this duality are found amid Bonewitz’s watercolor series Collecting Shadows. Created during a year in which she was constantly moving between places, these abstract compositions of interiors in hues of blue, gray and black are as much about what is left out as what is shown. In Collecting Shadows – Fifth Morning (2015), more than half of the paper is left unpainted, the white space acting as both light source and ceiling. As the title suggests, the shadows captured are fleeting; they will never fall upon the fireplace or wooden dresser in exactly the same way.
Cara Lasell Bonewitz, Collecting Shadows- Fifth Morning, watercolor, 2015
In many ways, this balance between transience and permanence defines Bonewitz’s practice, both in the subject matter she chooses and the materials she works with. Her white papier-mâché and plaster sculptures – the abstract shapes themselves referencing specific architectural details, her own body, or personal mementos – look like bones or fossils. They give the impression of hardness, when, in fact, they are quite delicate.
In another series, Seaweaving, recently exhibited at the Ventura College New Media Gallery, Bonewitz collects seaweed from local beaches, weaving it while it is still wet, and letting it dry on the loom. She then transforms the organic material into large-scale installations that will inevitably decay, the seaweed gradually changing in color, texture and weight. As in many of her paintings, these works are all about the shadows, the strands of seaweed casting their own hues and shapes along the walls. They are also about time, the collection and manipulation of the materials existing in contrast to their natural state.
Whether papier-mâché or seaweed, a fragility is threaded throughout Bonewitz’s artworks – one that feels equally delicate and strong. In Toaster Arm (2022), a papier-mâché piece inspired by the ridge of a toaster and installed at the Architectural Foundation so that it juts forth from the wall, this duality is felt once again. The piece exudes strength even when its placement feels tenuous.
Presence and absence. Still and unceasing. Fragile and strong. Bonewitz’s work is an interplay of contrasts. Time is the unifier, the question and answer that ties all of the series together.
Cover image: Cara Lasell Bonewitz, Bone Connection, papier-mâché, plaster, acrylic, 2022
