A collage of a woman wearing sunglasses and yellow tears surrounded by flowers and splotches of paint in a pop brightly colored pop culture style.

Psychedelic Tears

An Encaustic painting depicting a city with orange/yellow/red wax representing heat.  I was reflecting on the fires in California as well as the recent unrest in Minneapolis.

(en) Caustic City

An image of an open space held for a toppled barn, on the edge of a field of grain in late autumn, growing from land made of orange paisley, under a yellow, ominous sky with threads of lightning and grey, oily clouds.

Midwest 1

A tiny, round book featuring the moon as seen in Tuscany, Italy on a summer night

Amber Moon, Tuscan Sky

Drawn in black and white, the face of a young girl rotating into place over the face of an old woman. They share a torso dressed in early 20th century clothing and are framed with real butterfly wings.

Decay

A collage of a squid living inside of someone's mouth. Teeth are on the right side, forming a cave entrance while a scrap of map on the left creates a partial frame of the scene.

I'm Dearer to Me, Much More Than Ever I Was

There is circular black scratchboard with a white into black drawing of a thorny vine intwining the words " All I Remember were the weeds" starting from top and arching to the right. From the bottom left and arching to the top are the words "Stop Focusing on the" both phrases culminate at the word "Weeds". This is mounted on a scrapbook paper white lined garden tools on grey paper. In the center the canvas, scratchboard, and tool paper has been cut in a manner to show broken, sharp edges revealing a collage of several layers of leaves of one, lime green on dark blue, then further in white lines of leaves on pink echoing the scratchboard technique and farthest back small green fernlike leaves on white background. A Pearl is located on bottom edge of the floral collage surrounded by the jagged edges of the torn image. Along the outside of the grey paper creating a boarder  white marker on black canvas are the words "Beauty Before Us. Beauty Behind Us. Beauty Above Us.
Beauty under Our feet. Feel the Beauty All Around Us. See the Beauty Within. We are Beauty. Beauty will sustain us in the Dark Places of Life. Our Home, Our Planet is Beauty. May We care for it ALL!" A boarder of a floral pattern that relates to the center collage frames the work. 

Mind Frame

A white four by six inch rectangle on a black felt background. The rectangle shows an ink stamped typewriter, colored green, a grawlix on the page rolling out of the top.  To the right of the typewriter are two typewritten lines.  The top line says It was the best of times, crossed out in red, the bottom line says it was the worst of times.

Assessment: 2020 As A Postcard

A mixed media piece incorporating photography, paint, fabric, and mirror.

Midnite Mine

This is a paper collage with writing. There are two pictures of a man and a woman teaching a disco dance, and between those, a third picture of a young boy skateboarding. The narrative is a true story involving me and both of those things.

True Tales of Youth from the 20th Century

A book of flash verse on art & nature: vintage cigar box container for a loose leaf book. The cover is a photo of an unusual white mushroom amidst the prairie meadow plants collaged with a fall colored leaf, all on handmade paper. The book's inside has 19 pages of images printed on handmade paper, with flash poems written for each image, that were created about each piece in the 1-3 minutes the piece was presented to the group at the "Clay in the Landscape" workshop. 

"WE KNOW NOT BUT WONDER"

A collage of buildings and cars. A sun in the sky.

Big City

A mixed media, multi layered work involving paint and collage where excavated layers reveal layers below. Happy polka dots and a free form turquoise squiggle ply off of the reverse text in the lower left. 

You’re About To Be Happier Than You’ve Ever Beeen

A face drawn with color markers over a handwritten letter on lined notebook paper stares out at the viiewer. In the center of the face is a small orange envelope positioned vertically and stamped with an eye diagonally across the page. At the bottom of the envelope is a black and white cut out figure of a  white woman crouching with one hand on the ground, one hand raised near her head. She wears a striped dress.

The Eyes Have It

This is a collage was from a series on that began with carefully dried daisy petals, which were tricky to work with and glue down onto the Color-aid paper. The background is a an Epson archival inkjet printed digital pattern drawn in Adobe Illustrator. A postage stamp and other papers were chosen to complement the color palette and content, and the text (species name) was typewritten on Rives BFK paper.  

Ox-eye Daisy

Collage containing images pertaining to nature, landscapes, and culture. A moon on the top of the piece contrasts with an earth on the bottom right corner.

Bored,

This piece depicts a muscular centaur in black and white over a colored background of an indoor space.

The Legend of Bentaur

A mixed media hand rendering (acrylic paint, charcoal, crayon, pencil) on wood panel, inspired by the north central Minnesota landscape in summer. Splashy and deft. 

Schoolcraft Bitten

Color lines divide 57 small raised figures of various colors, white, blue, orange and 43 of them dark against a black ground shaded with pastel chalk. 3 light circular shapes and a number of small squares fill in some of the areas.  A strong fat yellow line curves from top to bottom across several horizontal fat orange lines separating groups of figures with no apparent logic.  The lines at first appear very definite but looking closer they appear very rough and porous.  This art represents my thoughts about my ancestors, the homes they left and the journeys they took.

Across The Line

Isle of Holy Name Lake. Intercostal view from my studio. color symbols of fall color, grasses, sky, water

Lake Series #7

Preservation of Dumpling invariants, including dough, ground pork, mushrooms, cabbage leaves,  green onions, ground pork, shrimp, ginger, green onions from Chinese New Year party with international students and friends

Frozen Time

It is a baby monkey dressed in a suit with suspenders.  Colorful and bright baby blue eyes.  A white button down shirt with suspenders.  The definition of monkey is off to the side and the word baby is colored with colored pencils jumping off the page in color.  

Baby

This painting of a young  Laura with vivid green eyes, and flowing red hair, captures her adorned by a hat with white roses, just after she has voted to keep her country a democracy.,

Laura Votes for Democracy

A black and white portrait photograph of a young woman is framed with small bones and pressed flowers.

Reliquary

This was inspired by a self portrait taken at the Franconia Sculpture Park inside a tall, secluded structure. In this moment everything seem to go silent and the higher I looked the brighter it got. While looking up in that small space the sun shined through and illuminated everything inside. So confined but feeling freer than I have in a long time. 

Confined Freedom

A brightly colored collage of an old golden yellow and orange armchair.

Armchair in Golden Orange Plaid

Imagine if someone could paint with hand cut glass.  This is a stained glass mosaic of a handful of bright red peonies, reaching upwards towards sunlight, underneath a stormy iridescent gray sky.  The stems of the flowers are long, flat pieces of glass, as well as some pieces of glass turned on their sides that catch the light just so. 

Peonies After the Storm

The interior view of a vessel, whose walls are lined with cotton gloves & painted with magical symbols, on the bottom are scattered thin bones, & rising from the center is a colorfully painted hand holding a silver star.

Psychedelic Tears, 2018

Wendy Benson