Tenebrous Messages

Featured Event

The Collaboration

This collaboration between visual artists, Denise Benitez-Gonzalez and Renee Converse, allowed for a raw, genuine conversation to occur regarding the metaphor of shadows as linked messages in our minds.

Converse’s light and airy paintings provided a stabilizing and grounding effect to the chaotic intensity found in Benitez-Gonzalez’s sculptures. The silhouetted figures emerging from the canvases beckoned to dance with the tentacle-like contours of the forms materializing from the floor, all joined by the lines of the tattered fabric, like wires transmitting ideas, or veins flowing with life. Both Benitez-Gonzalez’s and Converse’s works generously provided the life and connectivity required for this conversation to articulate fully, playing on the web-like processes of our minds.

Renee Converse

“Bittersweet memories have the power to drape and tangle endlessly in our minds. These memories – do they fracture us further, or mend with each revisit? Cherished relationships can cause deep pain through crisis or loss. Like a shadow, fracturing over an erratic landscape yet dependent on light to give it life, these memories tether our minds to our souls where messages from the universe can be shared freely. Seeking harmony between the memories played in our minds, and messages received in our hearts, can cognitively elevate us from that of a burdensome state of misery and chaos, to a grounded, peaceful and beloved state of being. Listen to these messages, create space, and let the shadows dance.”

Denise Benitez-Gonzalez

“There are many layers found within our existence; the layers of time, the layers of growth, the stratum shielding our world, shielding ourselves. Peeling back those layers can reveal painful memories or old wounds, leaving us eviscerated and incomplete. Shedding those layers, however, can leave us feeling anew and reborn. This stratum is a continuous cycle of connections and of life cycles, much like the intricate root system of trees, the delicate yet complex webbing of veins, the artifacts embedded within ancient soils, or the invisible scars carried within the soul.”