Mist

Michelle Benoit’s work often combines transparent and opaque materials. Cut, burnished, painted, stacked, mortared and coalesced. Time and again appeal, experimentation and intent are embedded, revealing process and structure as image. Color combinations are symbolic of the past. People, thought, events and the memory of place are all assigned a color and re-remembered through hue. The objects signify an idealized geologic core sample, where time and sequence are rearranged. Selected exhibitions include 60 Americans at The Makeshift Museum, Los Angeles CA, The Muriel Guepin Gallery NY,NY, Gebert Contemporary; Scottsdale, AZ, New Britain Museum of Art CT, The Sarah Doyle Gallery, Brown University, The Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY and the Stephen McLaughlan Gallery; Melbourne, Australia. Benoit was the recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship at the University of Iowa, the Merit Fellowship in Painting from Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Berkshire Taconic’s A.R.T. Grant, as well as consecutive Special Talent Awards from Rhode Island College. Her work is in the collections of the The Swain School of Design/university of Massachusettes Dartmouth, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s permanent collection, the University of Iowa and numerous private collections. She received a BFA from Rhode Island College, MA and MFA from the University of Iowa . While studying in Iowa, Benoit was strongly influenced during an internship at the State Office of the Archeologist. Born in Bridgewater Massachusetts, she currently lives and works with her husband, an architect, and quite a few previously homeless dogs, cats and occasionally other wayward critters. Together they are restoring a historic 18th century farmhouse in West Warwick, Rhode Island.