Jyl Bonaguro Artist … Sculptor … Playwright 

Jyl Bonaguro is a Chicago based sculptor and playwright with a professional studio in the Hermosa neighborhood. She creates sculptures of wings and the human figure in marble, limestone and mixed media for public and private art. Her sculptures have been featured in publications like NewCity Art, CS Modern Luxury Interiors, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and Sheridan Road and are in private art collections throughout the United States. Her play readings have been sponsored by Loyola University Chicago, Columbia College Library, Zhou B. Center, Hinsdale Public Library and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. She has also earned grants and support from the Illinois Arts Council, Cliff Dwellers Arts Foundation, Dante Alighieri Society Charleston and the Chomicz Family Foundation for her greatest sculpture project which is to carve a female figure at the scale of Michelangelo’s David in marble – Modern Athena. 

Jyl believes in a zero waste studio environment and all the marble and other stone waste in her Chicago sculpture studio is recycled into new sculptures and bases. Jyl Bonaguro find similarities working in mediums as divergent as sculpting and playwriting because both mediums are treated as interactive, narrative forms. Sculptures like her marble wings series tells a story through composition of form and style in much the same way a play tells a story through composition of words and style. Both forms require audience participation and interaction to help complete the stories and connect us with each other.