Longtime teacher’s art shown on 1st St.

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Bookshop Benicia moved to its new First Street location just a few short months ago. But already it is becoming a presence in the art community.

The store owned by Christine Mayall has played host to the poets who give monthly recitations as part of the city Art Walk. Now Bookshop Benicia is featuring its first local artist: Bonnie Weidel, longtime art teacher and former member of the Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees.

Weidel’s work, taken from collections titled “The Portrait Sampler” and “Footworks,” will grace the wallsof the bookstore until mid-January; an opening reception is Sunday.

“It will be our grand art opening to inaugurate our local artists showing,” Mayall said.

“When we first came down here I realized with the high ceilings it would work well for showing art.”

Weidel has lived in Benicia since 1981; she opened her Arsenal studio in 1986, and began teaching art to children ages 2 to 12 in 1990.

Through her program, Art For Kids, many community children have had their art displayed around town.

Yet for all Weidel’s years in Benicia, the new exhibit will be only her third in the city.

“This is a followup on the two or three exhibits I’ve ever had,” she said Thursday. “It’s kind of wonderful to be given the opportunity to share. It’s a surprise to hear people’s response, and to see the work up on the wall. I kind of keep it in a cupboard. I’m usually showing the kids’ work.”

Her work on display at the bookshop has two themes, and one is a theme she has visited before.

“Every once in a while I get off on a tangent with feet,” Weidel said with a laugh. “These are covering a time span of when I was at UC-Berkeley, as a graduate in studio art, and currently, within the last year or two.”

The other group is portraits, selected “as samplers” because while many artists pick a subject matter and focus on it, “I tend to be always exploring a different subject matter and a different process. There’s always something to learn from the process.”

Her portraits show watercolor, printmaking, print transfers. “One of them is self-disassembling, a series of shadows that I kept tracing of me on the paper, then retracing and painting over it,” she said. “The sampler is really just kind of exploring different approaches.”

Mayall and her husband, artist Tom Stanton, had thought about many artists to feature in the bookstore but agreed that Weidel would be a great fit.

For her part, Weidel was “extremely surprised and flattered to have Tom Stanton and Chris Mayall invite me to hang work at the bookstore.

“This is very nice of the book store to show. And it brings it attention to the store, which I’m glad to do,” she said.

“We hope that a lot of people will come,” Mayall said. “Bonnie is a Benicia treasure, and she’s given so much to the community through Art For Kids, Art in the Park. She did Christmas at the Clock Tower … the list goes on and on.”

If You Go
A reception for Bonnie Weidel’s “The Portrait Sampler” and “Footworks” will be Sunday from 4-6 p.m. at Bookshop Benicia, 636 First St.