Contact Paula to Make a Purchase
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One-of-a-kind narrative pieces by Paula Benfer; a storyteller through art. Created by various construction methods needed to communicate in a narrative voice, these pieces have been in galleries and competitive shows.
I have not listed them with prices but am open to negotiation if you are interested. I also would consider creating pieces that would commemorate the life or accomplishments of someone you know. This would require a great deal of dialogue between the buyer and the artist, and adequate time to create such a piece would be negotiated with the price. A signed contract is required before the creation will commence.
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Nar 1 - Hieroglyphics in Holstein
"Hieroglyphics in Holstein" This piece was awarded the top award in a regional exhibition in Kansas City, MO. The show was an exhibition of women in art presenting perspectives on women's issues. This is a fabric batik using rice paste resist on silk fabric. The fabric measures 36 inches by 48 inches and is stretched on a cherry frame. It is light and transparent.
This piece is a tongue-in -heek piece about my husband and myself. My son was always interested in Egyptian Art, even before kindergarten. I did a parody of an Egyptian panel from the King Tut collection. In it, King Tut sits on a tiger stool with his queen kneeling beside him. Ron was a minister in the United Church of Christ. So I put him in his clerical gown sitting on a Holstein cow stool. Notice the back end! My dad milked Holstein cows. I am sitting at his feet in "a submissive" role. I am wearing my art apron and am holding tools, a weaving shuttle and my car keys. I am always on the go. I don't like house cleaning, so I put toilet bowl brushes in my hair instead of peacock feathers. Rather than cobras on our crowns there are milking machine pulsators for milking cows. Ron is holding his hammer and saw, as he is a furniture builder; and he has Ohio wheat for the farm where he grew up. In the background you see symbols my children drew in the many cartouches. Sarah drew our log house and the bird. Mark would draw the scarab. There are references to our home states. Iowa has corn; Ohio has wheat. The udders of the cow are visible above on the top left, and the purple vase is an on-going joke in my family. On any special occasion the vase is passed on to an unsuspecting family member. We all think it is hideous, so we keep giving it away!
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Nar 2 - Protest to Housekeeping
"Protest to Housekeeping" I feel the guilt about cleaning constantly. I was raised to believe the house had to be cleaned well, weekly. That is a burden to add to my life as a teacher, a mother, a wife, a community volunteer, a political activist, and an artist! I got so frustrated I decided to create this 52 inch by 104 inch "quilt." It was created by laminating materials and collaging plastics and found materials. I laminated strips of quilted fabric, which had been sewn together by my great-aunt and my grandmother. I asked my teaching staff to give me their colored dryer lint. I laminated it and sewed it together, leaving hairy threads hanging everywhere. My brother gave me the T-shirt originally. It says, "Housework, it's a bitch;" and it reflects Pop Art images. My mother used to use my dad's worn out underwear for dust rags. So I used the T-shirt to dust. When it was dirty enough I made an apron like my grandmother wore. She never made straps, instead, she would pin it to her bodice. I collaged all of this between plastic and then quilted the whole piece. I added buttons, rubber house flags, pins, toe nail clippings, hair from brushes, pop tabs, curtain hooks, etc. There are chains of safety pins hanging in swags. Mom used to pick them up as she cleaned and pinned them to herself in a chain. I used clothes hangers and clothes pins as hangers. It is "clean and shiny!" People love looking at it. They think it looks attractive, but they love being shocked at the "gross" materials I used to create it. It seems fitting to me. I think it symbolically says a lot about the "job" of cleaning; nobody wants to touch it!
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Nar 3 - Ida's Passage
"Ida's Passage" My grandmother told me that when you became a woman you were given a thimble as a gift. It was symbolic of passage from childhood to adulthood. Usually the young girl was about thirteen, and she was expected to practice skills, like sewing, which would prepare her to be a wife. I still have my Grandmother Ida's thimble. It is bent and worn, but you can still see her name inscribed. In many cultures women are dressed with aprons when they pass into adulthood; in some they dance in ceremonies. I found a rusty dress form in a junk pile and I risked lockjaw as I clambered to the top of the pile to retrieve it. I took it home and cleaned it up. Then I took window nylon screening and sewed an apron for the form. Grandma never had straps over the shoulders. She always pinned her aprons to her bodice. I think safety pins are a symbol of security. I used metal shop findings and fish line to create the apron over the screen apron. At the bottom are thimbles with tapestry needles inside. They ring like bells when they move. That is reminiscent of objects on costumes in other cultures like Native American and African, which make sound during dance. The breast tassels are suggestive of burlesque, because this is about sexual transformation.
Once when this was in a gallery exhibition a little girl came up to me and said, "Oh Paula, I love your Cinderella dress!" I couldn't have been more delighted with her reaction!
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Nar 4 - Sonnemaker Album
"Sonnemaker Album" Sonnemaker was my mother's maiden name. Her family was of German heritage. I took an old antique album down to nothing and rebuilt it with soft fiber pages. I used fiber reactive dyes and photo heat transfers from real family photos. Each page tells a story of a "character" from my real family, like Aunt Minnie who homesteaded in Montana. She didn't know anyone so she ordered a set of dental tools and learned to pull teeth! There are family recipes included. Each page pulls a design out of the picture, like the blanket stitch edging on my mother's dress in her five-year-old picture, and becomes the design for the edging on the page with a picture of Honora and Emma Jean (Ex. These names illustrate that Grandma Sonnemaker gave terrible names to her children!).
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Nar 5 - Elizabeth's Acre
"Elizabeth's Acre" My favorite great-aunt was Elizabeth Decker Damborg; we called her Aunt Lib. This wooden box was one her brother Mark had given her. It wasn't anything special, but she kept old silk scarves in it. My father gave it to me when he helped dispose of her household goods. She had grown up on the home farm in Iowa, Dayton Township. Much of it is still in the family. In days past the farmers would make sure the rows of corn were absolutely straight, in every direction vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. Sometimes they plotted with string staked to the edges. The threads form this transparent barrier to the inside of the box and suggest this planting practice. On the top of the box I drilled corn kernels and tied them to a grid. The linen threads on the underside look like roots. Aunt Lib was a home economics teacher. She was trained at the Iowa State Teachers College, which became the State College of Iowa and later still the University of Northern Iowa where I attended, also. The hinge to the box is a small scissors. Inside there is a straw floor, old photos of Aunt Lib and the farm, a broken child's cup with a rooster on it, embroidery hoops, and other sewing objects. Inside there are kernels which hang suspended over the base. They move, like points on a compass move when a ship rocks. Life changes. I tried to communicate this through symbols.
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Nar 6 - The Reliquary of St. Ronald of Lima
"The Reliquary of St. Ronald of Lima" This is an "altar" of sacrifice. It is a tongue-in-cheek piece I made in honor of my husband who was a minister at the time in Lima, Ohio. The reliquary box is explained in the next set of images, but let me tell you the whole concept here. I made an altar from two wooden folding chairs which I burned with a blow torch for all of the "damn pot lucks" we used to have to attend. I wove brass through the slats of the seats. I put praying hand pins into the chairs instead of upholstery tacks. I faced the chairs and then put a piece of plate glass across them to be a table of "sacrifice." I have fishing line stretched around it to symbolize "fishers of men," but they also look like scratch marks. On the ends I have fishing swivels hanging because a minister's family has to be ready to move at any time to another congregation! There are also beads made from our old Christmas tree branches. The cloth is an elegant fabric with an edge created to look like "industrial strength triinity" images made from hardware and safety pins. On top is the "reliquary."
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Nar 7 - Reliquary for St. Ronald
"Reliquary for St. Ronald" A reliquary is a container that holds an object that shows the saint's sacrifice. During the Crusades, a cruel and inhumane part of history, the Christian armies brought hair or bones back from the Holy Land and put them in art boxes in the cathedrals. My husband kept his sanity in the ministry by building furniture and chopping fire wood. So I took a large bone and wrapped it with tree wrap paper. I have a picture of an icon in the bottom of the box and broken glass over it. I have crosses at each corner representing going to "the four corners of the earth." From this position I have a net made of fish line, strung like a hammock, holding the bone. There are twelve plastic communion cups upside down with an angel impaled into a bread cube underneath. There are candles from services, music, jars of feathers, mustard seed, pins, fish hooks, and toenails. All are symbols of hope or torture. The nails form an edge, and fish hooks hang out to "catch flesh." I tooled brass for the outside. I used iconic images of saints and I added fake jewels. I wanted it all to look "painfully elegant." I centered it on the altar, above.
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Nar 8 - "Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society"
"Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society" I was too sensitive to be a minister's wife. But I was honest, active in my community, and a teacher. So I was shocked when a woman parishioner told me, "You are a detriment to your husband's career," when I decided to run for my children's district school board. I was so hurt, but I didn't back down. I confronted her. We didn't resolve it, but we "knew each other's enemy well." Anyway, we moved a few years later. My friend gave me this T-shirt. I thought about my grandmother, who was a church quilter, and how much time there was to gossip about the minister and spouse. So, I took the shirt and quilted it with church symbols. Then, I took the church directory and made photo transfers of all of the women in the former church. I transferred them to red, purple, white, and green clerical church year colors. I added images of Ron, my children, and me. I used gloves to show how people can think they own a piece of you and hold you back. I added flies for the plague of Moses, and mustard seeds for hope. On the left chest is a Star of David for the Old Testament, and in WWII a mark of persecution. On it, I put a Sunday School pin with numerical bars, which show the number of years of "endurance" I held at that point in being married to a clergyman. Then, I stretched it all symbolically on a cherry frame my husband made. It looked like a quilter's frame and referenced a Torah scroll. I added vises to pinch and safety pins to hold things together.
I have to confess: I felt healed. Sewing through the images let me put this hurt behind myself. It is amazing how much damage to the soul a few words can cause.
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Nar 9 - "Remembrance Pillows"
"Remembrance Pillows" My mother and father were like a set of salt and pepper shakers. My dad fell in love with Mom the first day of first grade. I even have the Valentine he sent her as a first grade; it is one of my most treasured things. When a couple gets married the rings are carried on a pillow. When my mother died at the age of sixty, her head rested on a pillow. We were lucky to have her as long as we did, but Dad's twenty-three years without her were lonely and painful. I made these pillows with their wedding picture on white, and the image breaks up and fades away until it is left as a ghost-like image on the right pillow. Black closes in, like time.
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Nar 10 - Pickle Shelf
"Pickle Shelf" This is a rice paste resist batik done on rayon. It is quilted. Mom used to say, "Go into the basement and get Aunt Cora." That was my favorite type of pickle, but Mom made it sound like we kept the bodies of relatives in the basement! I knew all of them through their recipes. Mom was a GREAT pickle maker, especially green chunk pickles. They became prized Christmas presents and bribery gifts. I wrote into the background, "Pay 'em in pickles, Honora."
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Nar 11 - "Curriculum Shirt"
"Curriculum Shirt" One summer I took the Iowa Writers' Workshop. They told me I could use any medium to express myself, so I took that literally. While I wrote papers, I had a T-shirt posted with a sign that said, "Write on my shirt and help yourself to my homemade cookies." People did! Then I threw coffee on it and made photo transfers from my journal. I gave it yellow armpits, because writing is hard work! Then I sandwiched it in hardware cloth with sharp edges. I put wire cable around it and padlocked it in. I used my students' number two pencils to make a "crown of thorns" as a necklace. There are pins, photos, stitching, and a wire hanger inside. Then I showed it to my principal and my superintendent and said, "See! This is what I would rather be doing, making art rather than writing curriculum during my summers!" They laughed. They knew I loved teaching as much as art but I had to find ways to put it together.
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Nar 12 - The Revolting Daughter
"The Revolting Daughter" I was very involved in the commemoration of heritage for Grant Wood, a resident of Anamosa, Iowa. When we lived there, I was chair of the Grant Wood Art Festival. He painted "The Daughters of the Revolution" and it hangs in the Cincinnati Museum of Art. I always liked it because he was portraying the subjects tongue-in-cheek. I hated pouring punch and serving tea at church when I was a minister's wife. It was always revolting! So I took two ladies from his painting and put myself in the frame behind them. I am giving them rabbit ears and while they hold a tea cup, I am wearing a pin that says, "Uppity Women Unite." From it hangs a tea bag that has the words, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, hanging from it. I asked all of the ladies in the church for the white gloves they wore to church in the fifties and sixties. Then I tie dyed them and used them as fringe. I also quilted the image onto a tea cloth and then I smashed thimbles for the edge to use with pins and needles. That is a reference to the quilters in the church, like my grandmother. My glasses have hologram eyes on them because all things in the church are not seen as clearly as they should be.
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Nar 13 - Mid Life Passage
"Mid Life Passage" This piece is about a turning point in our lives. Ron decided after twenty-three years in the ministry to change careers. He turned to his woodworking, which is reflected in his wooden box. It has wood, nails, tacks, rulers, wire, tine, etc. The burned matches became a symbol for being burned out. On each corner are praying hand medals. The tin paint box represents me. There are watch parts all over the lid because my life is so scheduled. The number two pencils mark the months of the year and the grades through which students pass. The border is paper clips. Wires and colored beads protrude. In the front of the box are paint brushes that are formed into seats for little people, symbolic of my students whom I support. Both boxes are mounted on a mirror, which is a symbol for reflection in one's life. Between the boxes runs a knitted wire ribbon, and at each end of the ribbon are symbols for our children, who have grown up and are moving in their own directions and their own lives. Sarah is symbolized by a protractor, oboe reed and stars. She majored in physics astronomy and played the oboe and piano. Mark is represented by a card with a sample of his writing. Clips try to hold him, but the threads are loose and moving everywhere. Mark is a creative writer and was determined to travel overseas to live abroad.
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Nar 14 - Emergency Kit for the Minister's Wife
"Emergency Kit for the Minister's Wife" I found a Eucharist chest at an antique show. I took it home and decided I would share a lot of my church upbringing through symbols. At the center is a clear purse full of the "proper" utensils for the minister's wife. There are milagros, a little Bible, a hanky, offering, etc. It is in front of a purple velvet interior with angles everywhere. This is reminiscent of the church in which I grew up. Two bells are hanging and there is a pipe organ made out of kazoos. People always thought I should play the piano but I told them I played a kazoo and a saxophone! Pins stick through from the outside. Below the purse is a Depression Ware glass cup and saucer with miniature people sitting on the edge. A compass is inside because you never know what direction to move. There is a tatted doily under it and it is edged with batteries from hearing aides. There are two candles, safety pins, burned out matches, and "the golden rule." In the doors are gloves and handkerchiefs, which have offering coins tied into the corners. There are saint cards as well. On the top of the box there is army camouflage cloth and bullet casings, because you have to defend yourself from "all the shots." The side looks like a Sunday School attendance chart with pin heads and stars. On each door there are recipes from church cook books, paring knives and thimbles. On the back are pages I tore from Job, which also means "job."
One of the obligations of the minister's wife is to know where all the 9 x 13 pans are after the pot lucks are over. I didn't do that well. In fact, I didn't do women's groups well. I didn't like going to watch women sleep through devotions, hear a program on wild flowers, and then eat a slab of Jello before going home. Fact is, I didn't like many of the expectations people had for me. I was always getting myself into emergency situations. So I thought this art piece was appropriate! I had fun with it.
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Nar 15 - Referendum on Schools
"Referendum on Schools" I have been an art educator for thirty-three years, a school board member for eight years, one of the first art teachers in the nation to become a National Board Certified Teacher, have taught workshops and college level classes, and have written more state curriculum than Heinz has pickles. My two children were in elementary school when Ronald Reagan released "The Nation at Risk Report," and legislators have used education as a political football every since. It is so frustrating, and children are being caught in the process, as well as short changed. So, I created this piece.
I took pictures of students and put them in petri dishes with copper BBs. This is symbolic of the games we play with children's futures and the experiments we put them through. I put the dishes into the negative space of an old clock housing, which I found at an antique show. I burned the wood and added burned matches because educators feel "burned out" from all of this. There are dental mirrors because we are always being examined, and the public is always watching us, thus the eyes. There are lottery tickets on the front, and light bulbs. I wanted it to look like gambling machines. There is also shredded money. In Ohio, they sold the idea of a state lottery to voters saying that it would "solve" educational financing. They didn't explain that only the interest from the funds goes to education; it is a pittance. On the sides of the piece there are test tubes filled with "buzz words" that educators use. On the back are scan-tron cards, those standardized test strips where all the answers have to be the same. I asked my students to give me their thumb prints and then I impaled the clay prints onto the test strips. At the base, I sandwiched in crushed pop cans into the space. I picked these up off the parking lot at school. They are symbolic of how society wants children to all come out the same. I also used beakers on both sides to show left brained thinkers, the dominant group, and right brained thinkers, the ethereal group. Left brainers are represented with rulers and number two pencils. Right brained thinkers are represented with mirrors and feathers.
I have used this piece a lot to help administrators and school board members move into dialogue about education. It makes a big impact.
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Nar 16 - Hartwig Shelter
"Hartwig Shelter" I totally dismantled an old umbrella and rebuilt it using layers of fabric and laces. I had found an old umbrella in the farm house attic once. I think of an umbrella as a shelter from harm. I incorporated photo transfers to fabric of my mother's family, the Hartwigs. I tried very hard to make it look old and stained. The umbrella is fully operative.
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Nar 17 - Stone City Barn
"Stone City Barn" This was a commission series of collagraph prints. Only fifteen were done and all were sold. I was asked to create the image for the Grant Wood Art Festival. It is an image of a three story stone barn in which four school buses could be parked end to end. It sits on a large stone bed. It is on the location where Grant Wood had an art colony for two years during the Great Depression years. Grant Wood was an American Regionalist who believed that art should reflect the things an artist knows best. He knew, as I do, Iowa. The prints are 12 x 18 inches and are matted to 18 x 24 inches.
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