Patrons of the popular Pittsboro restaurant will enjoy the
colorful and textural works of printmaker Vidabeth Bensen and mixed media
artist Rita Spina from February 2 – April 6, 2013. Bensen and Spina are charter
participants of the Chatham Studio Tour. There will be a free reception on
Sunday, March 3rd from 4 to 6 PM. Come, meet the artists and share some custom crafted brews and delicious
snacks.
Vidabeth Bensen’s
original screen prints reflect 27 years living and working overseas. She is a retired high school art teacher and
used her skills as a printmaker while working as an illustrator and graphic
artist for the US Army in Germany and for USIS in Morocco.
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| Winter Trees by Vidabeth Bensen |
Bensen grew up in NYC. “I remember always making art,” she
says. She majored in art, with a minor in education at Brooklyn College. That intersection has been a continuous
thread throughout her life. The other constant has been screen printing. In
college she had a lot of acting friends, who asked her to make posters for
them. Making posters by hand was too time-consuming, so she learned to do silk
screening. “The first time I pulled a squeegee across a screen, I was hooked –
I have been doing it ever since.”
Her prints are hand pulled in her studio in Chatham County
and each one is unique. Many of her
prints could be called “screen paintings” as they are mounted on canvas and are
one-of-a-kind mono-prints. Color and
composition inspired by Bensen’s interest in abstract expressionism are the
subject matter of several newer prints. . “I consider myself so very fortunate
– I have been doing this for over 50 years – Every print that I make is still
exciting to me.”
Rita Spina is renowned for the re-visioning of discarded materials
into beautiful and distinctive art. “I am a “junque” artist, she grins. Spina’s
work is almost always 3-dimensional and is made of materials that have been
previously used, which includes, metal scrap, old wood, paper and often organic
materials themselves. “I find most of the materials in scrap yards, walks in
the woods, rural roads and often on my front deck, as people who know my work
pass "junque" along.”
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| Golden Touch by Rita Spina |
Born and raised in Manhattan,
Spina always expressed an interest in art, and as a child attended Saturday
classes at the famous Parson’s School of Design. She planned to be an art major
at Russell Sage College. However, she became an English major, as the Art
program was tailored for those who wished to follow the great artists of the
world -- that would come later. She married, had four children, went to Hofstra
University for her graduate degree in Psychology and eventually headed up
the Psychological Center. A subsequent clinical practice followed.
“Whereas in my career as a Psychologist,
I put people and ideas together, as an Artist, I now put materials and ideas
together,” Spins notes. “The materials
often stimulate the origins of what I do.”
Life’s cycles, the power of nature
and her changes, the tension between natural form and emerging technologies,
the remnants of progress and the coexistence of variables are an endless table
from which to choose for Rita Spina - nothing ever remains the same.
For more information about the
artists, visit: http://www.chathamartistsguild.org/portfolio-item/vidabeth-bensen/
and http://www.chathamartistsguild.org/portfolio-item/rita-spina/.
