David Eckard is the recipient of the 19th annual Bonnie Bronson Fellowship Award. A public reception for Eckard was held at Reed College on Monday, April 26.
David Eckard is an artist, performer, and educator based in Portland. His practice as a visual artist includes exquisitely fabricated sculpture, drawings, prints, and installations. These artworks often appear to be the residue of life or, more often, fiction. The artist also creates elaborate props and costumes for live, filmed and animated performances that explore conditions of masculinity, endurance, authority, and absurdity. His performances have often been of a transient nature, roving events performed for unsuspecting audiences in public spaces such as playgrounds, parking lots, and street corners, not to mention a floating performance on the Willamette River viewable from the Hawthorne Bridge.
His work has been exhibited internationally and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art in America, Artnews, and Sculpture.
David Eckard is an associate professor and chair of the sculpture department at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland. He recently returned from a two-year teaching fellowship in France. In addition to teaching, he had solo exhibitions at the Centre International D’Art Contemporain in Pont-Aven, France and at Atelier Dado in Cetinje, Montenegro. He has exhibited across the United States, with solo shows in New York, Seatlle, Portland, and Chicago. He received a Juror’s Award in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. He has performed at PICA’s TBA Festival in 2004 and 2006, and for New Works Northwest at On the Boards, Seattle in 2005. His newest work, ”Mountebank (a moral decline),” comprised of sculpture and drawings, is currently included in “Portland2010: A Biennial of Contemporary Art,” on view in the Templeton Building, 230 East Burnside (Fri-Sun 12-6 p.m.) through April 25.
From his origins on an Iowa farm, Eckard attended Iowa State University, then received his B.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988. After embarking on his career in Chicago, he came to the Northwest in the mid-1990’s.
For each of the past 19 years, the Bronson Fund, through its confidential nomination and selection process, has honored an artist from the Pacific Northwest with a fellowship and the purchase of their work for the Bonnie Bronson Collection, which is housed at Reed College and prominently displayed throughout the campus.
In 2011, an exhibition of the Fellows’ works celebrating the 20th year of the Bronson Fund will be presented jointly by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art, Lewis and Clark College, and the Art Gym at Marylhurst University.
The Bonnie Bronson Fellowship
In August 1990, Pacific Northwest artist Bonnie Bronson died in a climbing accident. Bronson, whose accomplishments included enamel on steel sculpture, welded and painted steel collages, painting and fabric design, as well as video production and gardening as an art form, had been a powerful force in the Pacific Northwest art community. Family and friends established the Bonnie Bronson Fund in her memory in 1991 as a special interest fund under the aegis of the Oregon Community Foundation. The purpose of the fund was to publish a catalog documenting Bronson’s work and life, and to award an annual fellowship to a working artist to advance and encourage intellectual and creative growth. Publication of the catalog coincided with the Bronson retrospective exhibition mounted by the Portland Art Museum in 1993.
Past recipients: Christine Bourdette, Judy Cooke, Ronna Neuenschwander, Fernanda D’Agostino, Carolyn King, Lucinda Parker, Judy Hill, Adriene Cruz, Helen Lessick, Ann Hughes, Malia Jensen, Christopher Rauschenberg, Kristy Edmunds, Paul Sutinen, Bill Will, Laura Ross-Paul, MK Guth, and Marie Watt.
Contacts:
Christine Bourdette, Chair, Bonnie Bronson Fellowship Committee, 503.248.6373
Stephanie Snyder, Director, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 503.777.7251