I manipulate, tear, build, sew, braid, pour, paint, and bind because these actions speak of anxieties, joys, fears, play, and confidence. I am interested in the positive transformation of the everyday by the selection and manipulation of materials and creating sculptures/photographs/hybrids, which utilize uncertainty and chance and speak of interconnectedness. My work incorporates building materials such as cement, metal, hardware, studio buildup, discarded objects, trash, as well as small amounts of paint or traditional “art” materials from my daily experiences and my studio process. I take photographs of these worldly and studio observations and manipulations and fold them back into the work. I use both the material and the photograph in similar manners. These collages, sculptures, and photographs tell my story of the expulsion of anxieties and fears and the desire for emotional and mental freedom.  I allow the materials and my surroundings to guide my practice. What I see, whom I come into contact with, and what materials I find, all filter into my work. I believe this expectation and allowance for uncertainty with a reliance on the daily environment makes art making and life more exciting and less of a predictable, regimented process. It involves taking risk, following your intuition with decisions and allowing things to unfold.

Veronica Bruce works across multiple disciplines of sculpture, photography, painting and hybrids of these genres with the vocabulary of painting at the core. 

Born in 1982, she grew up in a southwest suburb of Chicago and has lived in Chicago since 2005. 
Veronica attended the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana – Champaign where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Education in 2004. She taught high school art in Township High School District 214 from 2005 to August 2011. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in Painting through the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in December 2011. 

Veronica Bruce was nominated for the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant Award in 2011 and received a juror’s choice award at the Chicago Art Open in 2010. Bruce was also recently selected to participate in an Artist in Research Residency at threewalls Chicago and Bundanon Trust in New South Wales, Australia.