Scott, William P. "Jill Bonovitz." American Ceramics, February 1991.

In her first show at the Helen Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia, Jill Bonovitz exhibited eleven large earthenware vessels. In most of her works Bonovitz incises lines and inscribes words into the clay body and through the slip. Her tentative and irregular markings are layered over the pastel earth colors she applies with the terra sigillata technique. Bonovitz prefers to allow her working method to remain visible. She is like an Expressionist painter whose finished works include the accidental running drips and paint splatters that occur in the course of making a painting. If her ideas for new vessels begin with rigid formulas, as she progressed and her work approaches completion her approach becomes largely improvisational. Bonovitz’s drawn line has been compared to Cy Twombly’s, and her newest pieces reflect her admiration for Indian pots and Japanese tea bowls. At times, when her drawing and color are used primarily for decoration, as in Rain and Secretly (both from 1987), her vision loses its originality and seems to hew to someone else’s standard. Yet, in the newer works, when it functions with greater sensuality, and does not overpower the shape, texture, or color of the clay, the drawing works much more successfully.

Bonovitz’s strongest pieces are those that do not include written words. Perhaps the poems inscribed on several of the pieces are a crucial intellectual inspiration for her, but they sometimes seem like afterthoughts attached in hope of making the work appear more expressive, as in I Know (1989).

The works in this exhibition show a tremendous leap in Bonovitz’s vision. They mark her discovery of an ideal vessel form that not only answers her emotional and formalist interests but that also challenges her complex and inimitable technique.