About Bonnie Bird
Full disclosure: I, Bonnie Bird, am a recovering academic. I started my teaching career in anthropology at Vassar College, then moved on to Indiana University before taking up pen and brush to represent cultures in more personal ways. As an artist, I’m largely self-taught, although I’ve taken courses at both Penland and John C. Cambell Folk Art School as well as lessons from local artists wherever I’ve lived. I also vaguely remember private drawing lessons as a child, which may or may not count as serious instruction.
My primary medium of expression is drawing: 
my primary subject matter is people and their modes of relating to the universe. I use drawing as a form of meditation—as a way of detaching from Ego and all its attendant chatter, as a way of grounding myself in the present.
I took up book construction as a vehicle for collecting and displaying my drawings, then found making books a joy in and of itself. I like “the craft” of books: the selection of materials, the folding, the gluing, the binding. But I especially love filling the books with drawings and wry comments on the human condition.
Anthropologists are good at wry comments on the human condition or else they’re lousy anthropologists.
As part of my anthropological training, I lived on Indian reservations in the southwestern United States on and off for about ten years. I’ve also lived in Mali and Malawi in Africa for extended periods, and in Kuwait for nearly three years. These experiences with other cultures certainly deepened my appreciation of the common humanity of the world’s peoples, but, more importantly, they also helped me understand myself.
I’ve continued to travel since living the university, returning to Africa, journeying to the south seas, trekking in Australia, exploring Viet Nam and Cambodia, learning to samba in Rio. What I’ve discovered from all this is that I want my life to be a large, expressive, artful existence, rather than a slough defined by someone else’s ”shalts” and “shalt nots.”
What else defines me? Dogs. I have two adorable labradoodles to whom I devote enormous amounts of time. They’re performance dogs. They don’t just lie around on the couch all day waiting for a meal, a walk, a belly-rub. They participate in various dog sports: agility, tracking, obedience and canine freestyle. They compete in canine events.
As a result, I don’t spend a lot of time staring out the window.