Born 1930 in Chester, Pennsylvania, Joan Brechin Sonnenberg received a youth scholarship to study at the Carnegie Art Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. Her mother, a sculptor and a singer, and father, an industrial engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project, provided major creative influences. Lively conversations often revolved around religion, politics and the human condition, but invariably, the three found middle ground. As a college student at the Carnegie Mellon University, Sonnenberg was staff cartoonist for Tartan, the campus newspaper. After graduation, she continued with independent studies in printmaking techniques.
She won two Best of Show awards in 1976, with both exhibitions at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. Sonnenberg’s work has been honored with 57 major awards in art exhibitions throughout the United States – Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, with four solo exhibitions from 2004 to 2016. Jurors include internationally known artists Richard Anuszkiewicz and Faith Ringgold as well as art critics, museum curators and directors. Her large-scale etchings, paintings and murals have been included in 18 major corporation collections in Japan, Brazil and throughout the U.S.
A mother of four grown children, Joan Sonnenberg moved to the east coast of Florida in 1997 and since 2000 has been based in Naples. Petite, but with robust energy and insatiable curiosity, Sonnenberg maintains her lifelong studio practice working every day with sustained vigor. Her daily 4-mile walks continually inspire new ideas.