My year in the housing crisis | 2022

Holly Buntman-Ronnenberg

I am an interdisciplinary visual artist whose focus has mainly been in sculpture, but I love exploring form, texture and tone, and have branched into painting and refined drawings as well.

I often use imagery and organic forms found in nature, and abstraction.

Certificate of Excellence in Art History- Received through the Advanced Diploma of Visual Art course studied at the Newcastle Art School TAFE.

I was commissioned to make the entry gate for Pachamama House Hamilton, NSW in 2020.

I was a part of the Clouds exhibition at Newcastle Art Space Gallery in 2022.

I was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon in the US where I began my sculpture exploration and art practice. It's a very vibrant artistic town that has harboured artist studios and galleries with many art walks for artists to display and sell works.

The local community college in Eugene has a full array of fine arts facilities and tools for entry-level artists to fulfil their creative potential. I studied there taking as many fine arts classes as I could, such as intro to sculpture, bronze casting, stone sculpture, painting and figure drawing. We had a full ceramics department and a forge on site, so large kilns were available and we cast our own bronzes.

I was involved in a site-specific sculpture class held over the Summer, where we designed, built and installed a new stone sculpture for the fountain at the front of the campus.

I applied for the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to further my education in fine arts with a focus in sculpture. I went there for one and a half years before I ended up following love to Australia. Here I have worked as a catering chef managing food for events and kept my artistic life on the side. I helped manage a community space called The Commons, which was in Hamilton, where I also started a bulk foods shop. It was an amazing space run by volunteers. When The Commons shut, I put my energy into another local community space, Pachamama House.

In 2019 a small committee of people involved with Pachamama House applied for a place-making grant to make the back courtyard space more user-friendly and nice. I had an idea to make a gate for the entry from old bike parts. This place-making grant made it possible.

The Covid 19 pandemic affected my ability to cater for group events and workshops, so I went back to study and focus again on fine art. I enrolled in the 120 year old art school, which is now under the TAFE umbrella. I completed the diploma of visual art and the advanced diploma of visual art. I also received an award of Excellence for art history (It's a passion of mine to write, and I happen to really enjoy art history).

Now I'm an emerging practising artist in Newcastle. I use the Art Department in Newcastle on King street to make art, and I also work for the Hunter Street Art school now as a technician, supporting art students to create their artistic ideas.