We are interviewing some of the generous MFA alumni who donated to our new MFA 2020 Fund, which will support scholarships for future Black, Indigenous, and People of Color MFA students.

Our new goal is to raise $40,000 by the November 18, 2021 Art Sale, allowing us to increase the size of the yearly grant to match the other MFA merit awards.

Please join us in learning more about Julie Reneé Benda ’16 and her creative practice.

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Which year did you graduate and what brought you to MCAD for your MFA? Could you speak a little bit about your background?

I graduated in May 2016, several days before turning 30. I had recently moved from rural Wisconsin where I spent the better part of the last decade in organic farming. I wanted to restart my art career and I had a LOT of catching up to do. I had never owned a laptop, had no artistic community to speak of, and was desperate for the potential to bring my love of working with the land together with a deep tug to use art to connect and communicate.

In turn, what caught my eye about MCAD was that word “interdisciplinary”. Despite being relatively clueless about what that meant I heard a voice inside that said: “YES, THAT.” I also knew I wanted to stay in the Midwest because of my ties to the land, and the idea of growing in place rather than uprooting was important to me.

How did your art change while you were at MCAD?

I was trained as a printmaker, but before grad school had not experimented with how print could support my interest in more interactive, environmental, and socially engaged endeavors. I needed to shake things up in order to incorporate my background of science, botany and land use.

Needless to say, a lot had to change, and in my opinion it happened with one particular project: The Plant Library. For that project, I constructed a mobile library cart that lived for about two months in the MCAD library. Students, faculty and staff could check everything from houseplants to a jar of cedar wood shavings for a 24-hour period of time. Folks would take these friendly herbaceous companions to their office desks, studios, even to a stressful test they had. With the help of the amazing library staff at MCAD, it was quite successful. It was uplifting, changed people’s patterns and created a shared connection in an irreverent and earnest sort of way. I was also able to be humorous with it, and that felt very authentic to who I was.

How has your work evolved since your time at MCAD?

I have discovered how to be more unabashedly myself in my practice, and unapologetic to the whims and ways my creativity bubbles up. It took a few years, but eventually after my time in grad school I began to see that my diverse projects, tangents and interests all had a common theme of storytelling. Once I saw myself that way, it opened me up to more comfortably moving between mediums, audiences and outlets.

These days I am carving narratives into hand-harvested logs, illustrating field guides, hosting plant elections and producing a weekly comic about a creatively unfulfilled Beaver named Frank. My work has become much more free, and also found a lot more outlets in the public sphere.

What is next? Any new projects or jobs that are in the pipeline?

Ahhhh, yes! But they are still very small and need to stay secret right now. I can say that I’m in conversation about a collaboration with the Education Coordinator at Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, as well as making new work for an upcoming exhibition about land value. I recently dropped off two pieces at the Duluth Art Institute for their regional Biennial, which opens in October.

At this time I am tiptoeing in the direction of publishing and drawing and I want to spend more time watching very closely things that move slowly in our environment. Aside from that I’m always working on furthering the reach of my comic, Beaver of Fine Arts.

You donated to support our MFA 2020 Fund, which benefits future Black, Indigenous, and People of Color MFA students – thank you! What motivated you to contribute to this scholarship effort?

Scholarship and fellowship opportunities can be influential in shaping access and creating change; in an individual’s life as well as initiating cultural shifts at an institutional level. I know personally how impactful financial support is to pursuing this path and I am motivated to invest in initiatives that create a more equitable landscape in art and design. I hope that one day efforts like this won’t be so critical to that process, but for now they are and I was excited to be able to contribute.