Arts Alive San Antonio

BY JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

You may not think of the Carver Community Cultural Center as an exhibition space but it has, in fact, showcased a range of visual artists over the years in it spacious lobby and an adjacent room. The pandemic interrupted that tradition but the venerable cultural center is now regaining momentum as a presenter of both the performing and visual arts.

The current featured artist is Sylvia Benitez, a painter and installation artist who moved to the area from New York years ago and now lives in Seguin. She was welcomed with open arms. Andrew Gordon, the Carver’s director of education who is also in charge of the exhibits, didn’t have to think twice.

“I said, here are the (available) dates! We are happy to have you!” He recalled saying to Benitez when she approached him about possibly having a show at the Carver. “Sylvia has had a long exhibiting relationship with the Carver because of her leadership position with GAGA,* the organization she founded. We have seen her work exhibited with GAGA, so we were happy to be able to present this new showcase of her work.”

Titled “Hiding Places,” the new exhibition will feature about 20 paintings completed since January of this year, with the exception of one work from 2019. Most canvases depict landscape-type images, which are not inspired by any specific actual landscape, said the artist. She and her husband spent a good amount of time decided what to name the new collection, and finally settled on “Hiding Places.”

“It has to do with hiding, with being isolated… or maybe it’s about hiding places, moving them out of vision, hiding them to protect them,” explained Benitez in a recent interview. “There’s an ambiguity about it. So, the meaning is either a place that you hide in or a place that you want to hide. I like the ambiguity of it.” 

In the announcement sent to the press, and in our conversation, she also described her pieces as “painted amalgams of my stored memories…  They are painted to share or to find peace, to grow hope, to restore, to enter, to give distance from sadness, from the burden of our time.”

Her creative process is largely subconscious. She describes how she may dream of a painting but when she wakes up and goes to her canvas, something different comes out. “In my dream I know exactly how to do it and it’s a beautiful russet color, for example, but then when I wake up, I start with lime green,” she said. “I can’t tell you what that’s about. If I could remove the conscious part of my brain, it would be perfect. The more I think about something, the more likely it is that something different is actually going to happen.”

It takes her about two weeks to paint a single canvas, she noted. “So, each painting is charged with the energy I invested in it for two weeks.” All paintings are executed in oil paints on canvas and are available for purchase.

Benitez is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including two National Endowment for the Arts Visiting Artist Fellowships: at the Abington Art Center in Pennsylvania, and at the Escuela des Arte Plastica in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in addition to multiple other fellowships, as well as an AICA award for best exterior sculpture installation in 1997, also in Puerto Rico.

In San Antonio, she is probably best known as the founder of the aforementioned GAGA, which stands for Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association, a nonprofit organization for women artists that has more than 80 members. The name was inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi, a successful woman artist from the 1600s. GAGA helps its members exhibit and promote their work, network and learn from each other. Their exhibits have been strictly online lately, including the current one that features five GAGA artists, offering a more in-depth look at their work and their approach to art. They are: Lyn Belisle, Chel Delaney, Guadalupe Marmolejo, Norma Jean Moore and Hebe Garcia.

Benitez has exhibited her work throughout the U.S. and has had solo exhibits in cities across Texas but the Carver event is her first solo exhibition in San Antonio. She loves the lobby galleries in the historic building. “It’s a beautiful space, and that smaller, intimate room on the side is just gorgeous. The work sings in that space,” she said.
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* Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association / “Hiding Places” opens Sept. 9, 6-8 p.m.; Carver Community Cultural Center, 226 N. Hackberry, 78202; 210-207-7211; free.