Over the past two decades, Michael Boonstra's creative practice has focused on how we see and experience landscape. Can we see through aesthetic, scientific, and cultural lenses simultaneously and how can these ways of seeing inform one another? I am interested in our immediate experience of specific sites as well as the way we perceive places over time. These phenomena I am drawn to can be as fleeting as a cloud breaking apart in a desert sky, as drawn out as spring snowmelt in the mountains, or as long as the geologic shifting of our planet. This expansive range allows me to employ diverse materials, processes, marks, and environmental elements in creating my work; asking questions about our relationship to specific sites, the larger world, and each other.

Recent commissions include site-specific projects at the Oregon State University Marine Studies Building, the Oregon State Treasury Resiliency Building, and the Lane County Farmers Market Pavilion. Boonstra’s work is included in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the City of Portland, Oregon State University Cascades, Umpqua Community College, and PacificSource. He has been an artist in residence at Playa, Djerassi, Caldera, Pine Meadow Ranch, and the Kesey Farm. Boonstra received his BFA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Oregon. He currently teaches at Oregon State University.