Internationally recognized textile artist Sue Benner presents her new book WALKING NEAR WATER: An Artist’s View of White Rock Lake, a collection of color photographs culled from Benner’s years of walking the shores of White Rock Lake. She will be at Interabang to discuss and sign copies on Thursday, January 27 at 6:00pm. Be sure to join us! Mask-Required Event
Purchase WALKING NEAR WATER below!
Walking Near Water: An Artist’s View of White Rock Lake unveils a new medium for internationally recognized textile artist Sue Benner. Available by pre-order now for mid-December delivery, the 176-page dust-jacketed hardcover book showcases 150 color photographs culled from Benner’s years of walking the shores of the beloved city lake just blocks from her East Dallas home.
“I walk for many reasons — for my health and spirit, to observe nature, to witness beauty,” Benner says. “I can walk the same path repeatedly and find new delights every time. While walking, the world unfolds at a pace that is calming. It’s just the right speed for pausing, looking, and taking a photo.
”This book is my personal artistic discipline of seeing and experiencing,” she explains, “but it became a bigger idea of holding this place dear. Being outdoors gives us so much, especially living in a city. This book emphasizes the importance of urban green space, artistic exploration, the physical and spiritual benefits of nature, and all the people and organizations that make the lake so important to Dallas.”
Benner’s degrees in molecular biology and biomedical illustration have inspired her textile works. An acknowledged innovator and respected educator, she has been creating award-winning art quilts since 1981 and is represented in private, institutional, and corporate collections throughout the United States and internationally.
Her exploration of photography at White Rock Lake began in earnest five years ago. “I’m not a photographer; I’m an artist who walks with a camera in her pocket,” she says. Every image in Walking Near Water was taken with an iPhone, capturing water, landscape, skies, and wildlife at all times of day and across the seasons. “My camera is my sketchbook and composition teacher,” she says. “This is how I study pattern, light, and color.” To that end, Benner is planning a series of art quilts inspired by some of the book’s images.
Interspersed throughout the book are brief essays by local nature and wildlife experts and lake supporters. The foreword, by photographer and SMU art professor emerita Debora Hunter, describes Benner as “an urban monk whose daily devotion is the quiet walk along the water’s edge. Just as she has collaged swatches of patterned material into dynamic arrangements in her large-scale fabric artworks, here she constructs precise compositions by organizing and reorganizing shapes of textured detail, counterpointing linear elements, and balancing large swaths of sky and water.”
Designed by Jerry Herring and published by Herring Press, Walking Near Water is priced at $40 retail. For each book sold, a donation will be made to For the Love of the Lake and the White Rock Lake Foundation.