Small Notes

Mary's show also features her Small Notes series of mixed media collages that incorporate torn book pages, painting and found ephemeral text. Click here to see more. 

Artist Statement on the Installation

How do you know when to give it up? How do you know that maybe your talents don't lie in this particular field? How do you know that it's OK to do something else? Are you driven by need to do? The absolute belief that recognition is around the corner? That your work is not valid without someone else saying so? Can an artist, writer, actor, doctor, lawyer, be a success without outside recognition?

1,983 Rejections: 3 Acceptances is an homage to perseverance, deliberation, consistency, belief, and the poet who continued. Found in a dumpster in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood in the mid 1990's, here is a record of poetic submissions to literary journals from 1973 to 1978.

Meticulously recorded, continually re-submitted and endlessly documented, this poet wrote and wrote and wrote. Did she know something that most of us don't? Did she believe so completely in herself that she knew the next envelope was going to be an acceptance? Did she head for the mail daily just knowing that today would be the day?

As a young artist I always used as my SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) a bright turquoise one, so that when they reappeared in my mailbox, I could choose to open or not, depending on how I felt that day. Slides were returned in your SASE if you had not been accepted in the show. Long, slim white envelopes, rather like college admission rejections, meant that you had been accepted and that they were keeping your slides for publicity purposes. Bulky manuscripts returned meant no publication at this time, but this unknown poet just kept sending. She'd note on her index card the date, and then send off to the next publication on her list.

I have wanted to honor this mystery poet for a long time. I want to recognize the unfailing and unflagging way she continued even though the powers that be, may not have recognized her. I am in awe of her forbearance, her patience and her dedication. She was obviously a woman who believed in herself and knew she was a success.

Artist Biography

When Mary Bennett started her career as an artist, she used bright turquoise envelope as her self addressed stamped envelope (SASE). She did this because when it would reappear in her mailbox she could choose to open it or not, for if it was returned in the same envelope she had not been accepted into the show. Whereas if she received a long white envelope, it meant that she had been accepted.

Mary Bennett has a B.A. in Creative Arts, painting, and an M.A. in Inter-Arts from San Francisco State University as well as finance degrees from the University of Washington. She has had 10 solo exhibitions ranging from 1994 to 2011, including “Women Workers” in the San Francisco Art Commission and “Chaminade Artists Series” in the Chaminade Conference Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Other group exhibitions include: “Museum Showcase” in the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR and “Book Power” at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, OR.

Bennett was awarded the State of New Mexico’s, Emerging and Practicing Artists Purchase Initiative in 2003, and 2005. The Herstein Family Acquisitions Endowment Fund, Museum of Fine Arts, Sante Fe, NM in 2004. And the Purchase Award, from the Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum in 2002.