A Geometry of the Heart

At 16 she lay down in the middle of a busy two-way street. Then she heard an inner voice say, "Do you want to be a drunk, or do you want to be an artist?" She got up and never forgot the clarity of that decision. High school was a humiliation. She was deemed slow and unteachable. When she asked her dean about how to put together a portfolio for art school he asked her if she'd considered selling shoes instead. She was rejected by 10 schools, gained provisional admission to one. She put herself through a punishing study schedule graduated with two degrees a Master of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts. The day she received her diplomas she immediately went to her studio, took out a match and burned them.

"I knew that the paper meant nothing. Only a lifetime of making art will determine whether I'm an artist. What pulled me out of the road that night and the anchor of my life was and is art. It's how I make sense of the world, a world that threw every roadblock at me and hurled big fat juicy no-s. 'No. Not you. Not now. Not Ever.'" Today Pat Benincasa is a terrific artist and beyond that, a rare voice for the arts. Learn more in this powerful interview.

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