Participating Artists

Sylvia Benitez

Biography / Artist Statement

Sylvia Benitez is a nationally awarded artist; the recipient of many awards from numerous granting foundations, including an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards, an AICA Award (Association of International Critics of Art for best exterior sculpture installation,1997 Puerto Rico) two National Endowment for the Arts Visiting Artist Fellowships, a Puffin Foundation Award, an Empire State Craft Award, two Sculpture Space Residencies, and two MacDowell Colony Fellowships. Benitez also has also received Yaddo, VCCA, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Altos de Chavon, Dominican Republic artist residencies.

Her installations and creative works have been shown in numerous museums, sculpture parks and galleries throughout the USA including The Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Wave Hill, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum, The McNay Museum of Art’s Artist Looking at Art, Art Omi, Johns Hopkins University, the El Paso Museum of Art, The Islip Museum, The Abington Art Center, TX State’s Mitte Gallery, the Schuylkill Environmental Center, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace NYC, The Beeville Museum and the Museo De Historia, Anthropologia y Arte, Puerto Rico.

Over the years, Benitez has taught at The Southwest School of Art, the Majestic Ranch Foundation, Bihl Haus Arts, and the Escuela des Artes Plasticas. Her public artworks–over 60 collaborative public murals with children, were funded, in part, by The National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Art Council, The Delaware State Art Council, Sites for Students, New York City Construction Authority, and Arts Pro Tem of New Hampshire.

She is the founder and president of The Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association -GAGA- an eleven-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit, serving women artists of south Texas. The organization has an active membership of 80 members and has served over 100 women artists since its inception. For it, Benitez has curated, installed and marketed over 30 thematic exhibitions, many of those being all-member shows.