Moxy Studios > Our Artists > Mary Jacque Benner

“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. — “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.

Art is the creative manifestation of Beauty and Truth. It is making the ordinary extraordinary, whether it be a sound, a sight, an experience ora feeling. As an artist and educator I try to concern myself with these things and make my art the vehicle through which these ideas are felt and viewed.

Mary Jacque Benner, RSM

January 5, 1944 – August 10, 2004


	© MOXY Studios, LLC 2005

Black Hole Series

This striking series of original watercolors seems vastly different from Benner’s cemetery images upon first glance. However, these works also struggle with the subject of one’s own mortality. Black holes floating in a sea of distinct layers of color represent the foreign and deadly cancer cells that form beneath the surface. As an artist, Benner quietly filled page after page with these melodic and somber watercolors.

3811 Magazine Street • New Orleans, Louisiana 70115 • 504.309.2516 • mare@moxystudios.com

Located in Uptown New Orleans on historic Magazine Street between Louisiana and Napoleon Avenues. Approximately 3 miles towards Audubon Park from Downtown.

ARTISTS:

Mary Jacque Benner

Shannon Bowley

Géza Brunow

Joan Cox

David D’Agostino

Chuck Deffes

Scott Hebert

Sheep Jones

Mia Kaplan

Laura Mae

Kenny McAshan

Julia Niederman

Martha Oatway

Cara Ober

Ayanna Olitt

Randy Price

David Richardson

Timothy Weekly

TRANSFORMATIONS

These digital images are interpretations of the human figure and human emotions as they are revealed through cemetery monuments. These images are a new way of looking at a lost art form which has its root in the most ancient and dear of human traditions: honoring the memory of the dead. They are a popular effort to sentimentalize a force that refuses to cooperate with the attempt. They convey the irrepressible coming of death which is at best diffused by our efforts to make it somehow more appealing. The maimed and corroded nature of the monuments (which is exaggerated and enhanced by the computer) is another layer of pathos which adds to the emotional reaction to this work.

This work was done on the first computer that Sr. Mary Jacque had in the late 80’s and early 1990’s, a Commodore Amiga. They were printed by a Xerox 4020 ink jet printer. She explored the computer as a new artistic medium with inexhaustible possibilities and continually upgraded systems and software. The visual fiber of these prints would be completely different if printed with computer equipment today. These are one of a kind prints signed by the artist.