Bonnie Bronson


Bonnie Bronson was an American painter and sculptor and one of Portland, Oregon's most prominent artists during the 1970s–1980s. Randal Davis said that her work showed "an abiding love for the sheer beauty of materials and a fascination with unusual structures and systems."
Bronson was born in Portland in 1940, and attended the University of Kansas, the University of Oregon, and the Portland Art Museum School. She married sculptor Lee Kelly in 1961. After their Portland home and studio were heavily damaged in the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, they purchased a former dairy farm outside of Oregon City, where they spent the rest of their lives. They had two children, Kassandra and Jason. In 1990, Bronson died at age 50 in a mountaineering accident on Mazama Glacier on Mt. Adams, Washington. An award in her name, the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship, is presented to one Pacific Northwest artist each year.

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