ABOUT THE ARTIST
NOËL Bennett’s abstract art shimmers with color and texture. The hallmark and confluence of her lifework – painting, weaving, writing, metalworking, building in nature - stems from a shift in consciousness she had while living with the Diné (Navajo) in New Mexico for eight years. Bennett’s art has gained depth and definition through life experience.
After attaining her graduate degree in Art from Stanford, she studied independently with renowned artist Richard Diebenkorn. She taught art for five years at the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California, while also providing private art instruction. Noël came to Dinétah in 1967; once on Navajo land, she began her immersive in-depth exploration and education in Navajo textile weaving. As she sheared sheep and dyed wool, she saw that what the Western world and Stanford valued had no relevance here. There was no word in the Navajo language for “Art” Or “Religion.” The words were absent because there was no distinction between how one leads one’s daily life and how one functions as a spiritual being. Bennett brought these tenets into her art studio.
Her weaving experience led to her conducting over 200 symposia, lectures, keynote addresses, demonstrations and workshops at museums, universities, conferences and weaving guilds across the country on the art of Navajo textiles in their historic and cultural context. Venues included including Ansel Adams Gallery, Yosemite, CA; University of California, Berkeley, CA; New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Laguna Gloria Art Museum (now Contemporary Austin), Austin, TX; Textile Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ; Arizona State University Museum, Tempe, AZ; Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art (now Wheelwright), Santa Fe, NM; Denver Museum of Natural History, Denver, CO; San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego, CA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; and St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO. She authored 10 books on the subject. She founded the Navajo Textile Restoration Center in Corrales, New Mexico and Shared Horizons, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to research and public education on Navajo textile arts and taught at the University of New Mexico in Gallup.
During these years, Bennett also painted and exhibited her work.
Her four-decades-long series, The Infinite Moment, is comprised of abstract paintings with layers of textured iridescence build on each other until a non-erosive mesa, a mountain, Mother Earth emerges from the canvas and monumentally rises to meet (and mate) Father Sky. At its core it honors the sacredness of this union and the need for female and male energies to be in balance. Bennett views these pieces as akin to a visual mantra, each work manifesting the archetypal T. Taw: Interstice of Horizontal & Vertical. Unity out of duality. “Not two but One.” Beauty. Balance. Blessing.
Bennett has an upcoming solo exhibit and lecture at the Sandoval County Historical Society, Bernalillo, NM. Her work has been selected for The Art in Architecture Program: U.S. General Services Administration National Artist Registry, Washington, D.C. Recent and upcoming press includes Magazine 43, Berlin, Hong Kong, Manila; LandEscape Art Review, UK; ART UP MI, Milan; Superpresent Magazine; 3 Elements Review; and Apricity Magazine.
She also has been engaged in a 40-year collaboration with the Ansel Adams family to protect a geologically significant amphitheater of spires, Cathedrals Canyon, in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. She is recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts grant and spear-headed the hands-on building of two demonstration projects on how to build and live gently in natural areas. Her project was called A Place in the Wild – Gentle Architecture for Fragile, Natural Places. This work is ongoing. |