MoxywebLOGO.jpg
Moxy Studios > Our Artists > Mary Jacque Benner
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
 
T07 Crucifixion.tif
© MOXY Studios, LLC   2005
T15 Nightflight1.tif
MJBblackhole.tif
MJBblack circle2.tif


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.
© MOXY Studios, LLC   2005
Our Artists
Current Exhibit
Call for Entries
UPCOMING Exhibit
PAST ExhibitS
Contact US
LINKS
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
News & Reviews
Commissions

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.