Julie Bentsen is one of the featured artists in Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza on Saturday, April 12 @ The Pomegranate Gallery, the first in a series of events produced by 3Po3try NYC.
Interview by Thomas Fucaloro
What one word describes your art style? Slithery
What's your idea of the the perfect painting? An image that puts the faculties of the mind in a state of free-play. The mind struggles to identify a concept but finds none—and so it dances instead.
What's your best artistic moment?A book that I made from scratch in a print-making class, filled with nightmare images and the lyrics to the Radiohead song Climbing up the Walls. I bought the book board, book cloth, and made the images out of mono-prints. it felt good to actually construct an entire book with my own hands.
What's your worst artistic moment? I drew a picture in the 6th grade of a skeletal Santa Claus riding a sleigh drawn by dragons—the dean of my school took it and called my mother. He expressed his concern that the sketch might be a sign I worshiped Satan. I was then given mandatory "counseling". True story.
If you could steal a piece of art what would it be? A stone gargoyle from a cathedral, probably somewhere in Europe
What time of the day do you mostly create? Art by day, dream by night. Each is necessary
What do you do to get into your art? Daydream
What's the weirdest place you ever created art? On a "haunted" Long Island campus, built on the burial grounds of the Shinicock tribe.
What's the weirdest thing you ever painted on? A car-jack
What piece of art changed you forever? One of Soutine's paintings of a slaughtered cow
What artist, dead or alive, would you like to be friends with? Dali—we shall walk our anteaters together and drink tea.
Do you have any artistic superstitions? Nope.
The creature that humans call Julie Bentsen is a Surrealist Illustrator from the floating island of Staten. She has studied architecture, engineering, psychology, and ancient religions. She hopes to someday return to her home dimension. She works with pen, ink, oils, metal-working, jewelry design, small-scale sculpture, and nightmare tributes. See examples of Julie's work.
Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza Saturday April 12th 6:00 -9:00 pm
The Pomegranate Gallery 137 Greene Street New York,NY 10012
Advance tickets (including early bird specials) may be purchased here