Bio: Pat Benincasa
Pat Benincasa, is a first-generation Italian American woman, visual artist, art educator and podcaster. She has received national and international recognition for her work and been awarded National Percent for Art, and General Services Administration (GSA) Art In Architecture commissions. Her selected work is archived in the Minnesota Historical Society.
For over 30 years she has taught college and high school art: From studio arts chair at Perpich Center for Arts Education to designing high school visual arts programs for Performing Institute of Minnesota (PiM) and St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists (SPCPA).
Her Fill To Capacity Podcast is heard wherever you listen to podcasts.
Artist Statement
My passion is bringing ideas to life through art, an inclusive force that pulls us together to see the world anew. As Martin Heidegger said, "We know a thing by how it gathers the world unto itself." To me, art dissolves boundaries between our “here" and "there," drawing us into connection.
In my studio, I build with materials. When I podcast, I paint portraits with words. Both activities require a creative process that celebrates our authentic selves.
Information alone informs the mind. Communication must resonate deeper, stirring heart and spirit. Knowledge matters most when it kindles understanding across divides. My art seeks those timeless ties that bind.
Critical Acclaim
“Artist Pat Benincasa’s extraordinary sheet metal paintings are unlike anything I’ve ever seen! Her passion for geometry is clearly expressed throughout her amazing portfolio of 2D and 3D representations of the networks underlying cities, transportation conduits, bridges and the spaces defined by geometry in all kinds of industrial production systems. But I also see fractal representations reminiscent of biological transport systems and am reminded of the neural network of the brain or complex connections of arteries, veins, and capillaries in the body.
Her works often break conventions of classical composition. Three dimensional structures extend outside the confines of the painting surface. Value, rather than color, sets the mood and focus. Linear shapes, polygons, and great perspective drawing lends to the 3D effect, in addition to physical sculptural forms extending from and off the painting surface.”
Victoria Oldham, Range Dog Publishing
“...Alternately, she also creates traditional paintings that evoke the furnace of heat and energy that a factory really is in its most profound, productive moments. River Rouge (2013-14) presents eight small vignettes of exterior factory scenes that alternate between cool blue and a flurry of steam and heat rising from the metal ‘skin’ of the factory animal. Their small scale presents a cacophony of organ like forms that could be any sort of mysterious beast, while their variety point at how multifaceted the scene is when walking around one of them, how each contains secret corners and vast canyons of space. For despite their pure use value, these mass objects are proof of the imagination of a society leaning into its future.”
David Gibson, Gibson Contemporary
Download the full essay.