Michael Boonstra
Fairbanks Hall 322
220 NW 26th Street
Corvallis, OR 97331
United States
Boonstra received his BFA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Oregon. He is the sculpture coordinator and co-founder of the Creative Field Work program at Oregon State University.
Recent commissions include site-specific projects at the Villard Hall Heritage Project at the University of Oregon, the Oregon State University Marine Studies Building, the Oregon State Treasury Resiliency Building, and the Lane County Farmers Market Pavilion. Recent exhibitions include the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, The Reser Center, PRAx, and The Arts Center of Corvallis. Boonstra’s studio work is included in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the City of Portland, Oregon State University Cascades, Umpqua Community College, the OSU School of Forestry, and PacificSource. He has been an artist in residence at Playa Center for Art and Science, Djerassi, Caldera, Pine Meadow Ranch, Signal Fire, and the Kesey Farm.
Over the past two decades, my creative practice has focused on how we see and experience landscape. Can we see through aesthetic, scientific, and cultural lenses simultaneously and how can these ways of seeing inform one another? I am interested in our immediate experience of specific sites as well as the way we perceive places over time. These phenomena I am drawn to can be as fleeting as a cloud breaking apart in a desert sky, as drawn out as spring snowmelt in the mountains, or as long as the geologic shifting of our planet. This expansive range allows me to employ diverse materials, processes, marks, and environmental elements in creating my work; asking questions about our relationship to specific places, the larger world, and our shared place in it.
My teaching aims to develop the different interests and impulses of students into thoughtful examination and creative practice. An atmosphere of openness and cooperation can be the catalyst to offer students the skills, both mental and physical, that will push parameters, question paradigms, and solve problems. My goal is to cultivate this type of inquisitive environment within my classes so students are equipped to carry it beyond the classroom into the world.