John Bono

John Bono is a photograper, cinematographer, media and installation artist,  web designer, and programmer based in Buffalo, N.Y. The son of James Bono, a history professor at the University at Buffalo, and Barbara Bono, professor of English at the same university, John received his BA (2010) and MFA (2014) in Media Study from UB. In addition to solo projects, he has worked with the Irish Classical Theatre, Torn Space Theatre, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and Squeaky Wheel, and is a frequent collaborator with media artist Brian Milbrand on projects including the "Front Yard" at the Burchfield Penney, for which Bono designed a program that takes pictures based on events throughout the day, which are then merged with weather data for later use by artists and projected on the front wall of the museum.

 Much of Bono's own work explores the theme of melancholy and its connection to creativity, a role he conceives as primarily a positive and freeing one. In a 2011 statement on the subject, he writes:

"... Melancholy results from intense introspection that can then flash out as creation. ... The sublimation that occurs from melancholy holds great power in the making of art. The Renaissance witnessed a multifaceted paradigm shift that involved humanism, art, science, religion, and movable type, all of which revolved around the person: the subjugated subject rediscovered as sublimely self-conscious subject. This rebirth also created disestablishment and polarized thinking. Here we begin to see a split between the scientific community and the artistic community. The sciences become empirical / impersonal and the arts become holistic / personal.... I have increasingly reflected on my subjectivity as a man in our highly technologized twenty-first century. From my early preoccupation with light and the image to my struggles with inwardness and forms of anxiety has come recognition of growing creative power." [1]

For more information on John Bono's work, visit luxetbono.com.

1] John Bono, Artist's statement, http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jfbono/about.html. (Accessed 07/09/2013; link no longer active.)