Meditative and atmospheric, Seeking the Sacred, a solo exhibit by Brooklyn artist Jon Bunge, will change the way you look at the humble twig.
On view at Established Gallery, Bunge’s show features nearly 30 intricate sculptures composed of sticks and branches the artist sourced from the streets, friends’ gardens, or the internet. Hanging on the gallery’s walls or suspended from the ceiling, the works are dramatically lit to cast ethereal shadows.
“To me the shadows are a phenomenon of light, an immaterial thing. There’s no substance here. If we turn the light off, it is gone,” Bunge explained over the weekend. "It’s just so otherworldly and that’s the feeling I’m going for with my work, something that takes you out of the realm of the ordinary and into a realm beyond everyday experience.”
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Bunge grew up surrounded by trees. His mother and grandparents, avid gardeners, instilled in him a love for flowers, plants, and nature.
“I don’t see many artists working with branches,” Bunge says of his favored material. “And I just love working with nature. There’s an endless variety of branches...and they all have different [traits].” The works in the exhibit are composed of hydrangea, forsythia, curly willow, and pine branches. Bunge collected the pine pieces from discarded Christmas trees left on curbs after the holidays.
“To me, these branches are sacred,” he continued. “This is like creation right here...and where do we all go if we want to relax? We get out of the city or we go to the park. There’s scientific research that says when people go to the park, their heartbeats slow down, they start to decompress. It’s nature doing its magic on us. This is all sacred territory. Trees are sacred to me.”
Though he loved art in high school, Bunge studied English in college. He worked as a social worker before returning to school to receive his Masters in Divinity from Union Theological Seminary. “I wanted to be a pastoral psychotherapist, a psychotherapist who approaches things from a spiritual angle,” he says. “Then I wanted to help low-income people.”
Bunge then worked for more than 13 years at a non-profit that assists the formerly incarcerated and people battling addiction in finding work. “It was a great job but then I fell back in love with art,” he recalls. “I was in a store one day and I saw these kids' paints on the shelf. Before I even thought I about it, I just picked them up. I got home and [the artwork and emotions] just came out in a flood. I had so many feelings from that job—so many people going through such trauma—I needed an outlet. Art is such a tremendously healing pursuit.” Today, Bunge works for an organization teaching adults with development disabilities how to paint. “I’m helping people to really activate that creative side of themselves and it’s just so fun.”
Bunge was a two-dimensional artist, working in painting and collage, when he decided to take his practice to the next level. In 2013 he enrolled in the MFA program at City College of New York. “I had to take a sculpture class,” he recalls. “I had some trepidation and then I did it...and fell in love with sculpture."
“I first used cardboard, because I was comfortable with paper, and then plexiglass because I liked the light effect, but that’s so plasticky and human-made.” In the school’s wood shop Bunge discovered leftover wood scraps and he started working with these. “Then I was walking down the street one day in my neighborhood and I saw a branch that was down after a storm and I was like, ‘Wait a minute. That’s wood, just like what I’m working with, but that’s more beautiful than the wood scraps,’ so that got me started with the branches.”
Bunge typically starts by filing a groove into a branch and attaches another branch to it, making a connection that the artist then responds to. “Sometimes I have a general concept but sometimes, kind of like a jazz musician, I’ll do one thing and react to it, and I keep reacting. It’s fun that way because I don’t quite know where it’s going.” Bunge compares his method to birds building a nest and displays photos of birds and their habitats on his studio door. “I feel akin to birds building something with sticks and with natural elements,” he says. “Their [nests] are beautiful and architectural, and they’re not using glue. I’m using glue to help me. They’re just assembling this thing and it’s really quite miraculous.”
Along with shadows and nature, Bunge also incorporates movement into his artwork. “Motion to me is at the center of the universe,” he notes. “Right now, our planet is spinning. Our planet is also rotating around the sun. Right now, our hearts are beating. We’re breathing…growing. It’s constant. So the motion [in my art] captures that feeling that the universe is in constant motion.” The gentle rotation of his suspended works is mesmerizing. “I’m looking for the meditative, quiet,” Bunge says. “Hopefully it calms you and reminds you that we can have quiet in our lives.”
Bunge hopes visitors to “Seeking the Sacred” will learn not to take trees for granted. “They’re saving our planet right now. They’re taking in carbon and they’re putting out oxygen for us.” he explains. “I’m so upset about climate change. If my work can bring people’s attention back to nature, its beauty, its sacredness, maybe it will help people realize that we have to take better care of the planet. We have to make changes…. I want to put nature at the forefront.”
“I am trying to elevate these branches to a position of beauty and reverence,” he continues. “I’m looking for that feeling of reaching for beyond, seeking the sacred.”
Learn more about the arrist at jonbunge.com.
Seeking the Sacred by Jon Bunge
Established Gallery, 75B 6th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
On view through December 4, 2022