• Botanica
  • ABOUT
  • Retrospective
  • Landscape
  • OPERA BOOK
  • ARTIST AS SHAMAN

News

PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS, COMMISSIONS, AWARDS

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2013

Private psychotherapy practice, specializing in coaching and counseling for artists and highly creative individuals. http://www.denitabenyshekphd.com/artistscreators.html

Ph.D. Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA.

Associate Mental Health Counselor, Washington.

Benyshek, D. (in press). The artist as shaman. ReVision, a Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 32(2), 54-60.

2012

Benyshek, D. (2012). Art audience as shamanic community: How art meets psychological, social, and spiritual needs (Wang, Trans.). In G. Shuyun, W. Weibo & Q. Fang (Eds.), Modern artists and shamanism (Vol. II of Encyclopedia of shamanism). Beijing: 商務印書館 (The Commercial Press).

This chapter, in English, may be read or downloaded here:

art_audience_as_shamanic_community.pdf
File Size: 971 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Benyshek, D. (2012). An Overview of Western Ideas regarding the Artist as Shaman (Wang, Trans.). In G. Shuyun, W. Weibo & Q. Fang (Eds.), Modern artists and shamanism (Vol. II of Encyclopedia of shamanism). Beijing: 商務印書館 (The Commercial Press).

Cardeña , E., Iribas-Rudin, A., & Reijman, S. (2012). Art
     and psi. Journal of Parapsychology, 76(1), 3-23.

Pages 14-16 discuss psi experiences related to my art and related creative processes.

2010

Picture
__________________________________________

A True Story:
The Spontaneous Shamanic
Healing of a Boy. 


Presentation at the 27th International Conference of the Society for the Study of Shamanism, Healing, and Transformation. Written with my son, Hans Janos Benyshek van Wyk.

2009

The Annual International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing
was founded in 1984 by Dr. Ruth-Inge Heinze to preserve and further the integrity of shamanism and share the latest insights in the field of alternative healing.

Presenter: 
2009 Conference - Shamans of the 21st Century
Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California


WinterStar 26: Tribal Spirituality, Presenter, "Contemporary Artists as Shamans" and "Healing Arts", Atwood Lake Resort, OH, www.rosencomet.com

Tuition Grant, Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco
July 21 - 26, 2009
Starwood XXIX Festival, Sherman, NY
We welcome you to the Starwood Festival; a celebration of diversity and alternatives in belief systems, lifestyles, and spirituality. Here you will never find a struggle to define which truth is the "real" truth, but rather a community of explorers fresh from their many journeys through realms both alien and familiar, flush with discovery, eager to share the wisdom they have found. Here are the children of the quest, their vision neither obscured by the forest nor are their minds diverted by the numbering trees, but peering upward and outward in wonder, beyond the night sky to the distant stars themselves.

The Starwood Festival is the largest Pagan/Magickal/Consciousness gathering in North America (perhaps the world). Starwood features classes and workshops by both locally and internationally acclaimed artists and authors. For fine music, dance, drumming, poetry, and film there is no equal to Starwood, currently held near Lake Chataqua at the Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman New York. See for more information:
http://www.rosencomet.com/starwood/2009/index.php


Starwood presentations:

Art Audience as Shamanic Society

Denita Benyshek's current research investigates the art audience as shamanic community. Denita will define shamanic community, examine how individual and societal needs are met through art, reframe attendance of art events as ritual, provide a brief overview of recent research on the healing power of art, and share personal stories. This presentation will enhance your ability to engage with art, find meaning, and achieve a state of mystical union and transcendence through art.

The Contemporary Artist as Shaman

When 82 year old anthropologist, Dr. Ruth-Inge Heinze, taught her last seminar on shamanism at Saybrook Graduate School, Denita Benyshek was among her fortunate students. Knowledge, conveyed through lectures and through a series of visions, revealed many similarities between shamans and artists.

Using Dr. Heinze’s definition of a shaman, Denita will demonstrate how artists may qualify as shamans. The discussion is grounded in over three decades of experience as a professional artist, which provides autobiographical evidence of shamanic experiences during artistic creativity.

Research, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, creative studies, art history, and religious studies, is also considered towards constructing an interdisciplinary and multicultural theory of the artist as shaman. Topics will include calling, initiation, androgyny, shamanic journey, healing, integration, and an alternate, nonpathological, model of artistic creativity.


Picture
May 27 - June 2, 2009
International Society for Shamanistic Research,
University of Alaska, Anchorage.
 


http://www.folkscene.hu/magzines/shaman/index.htm
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/anthropology/conference.cfm

Featured Artist in Coreopsis:
an online Journal of Myth and Theatre

Picture

Spring Issue, 2009










Welcome, Onlooker.

I have gifts for you, brought from the frozen arctic, passionate Slavs, and animist farmers. Please enter my artwork.

Stay for awhile. What do you find?

In the light of your focused, extended gaze, you leave sensate reality and a trance develops that will take you to a visionary realm. Slow, breathe, open, and be receptive. You see images, textures, and colors merging with the images of your memories, the textures of your emotions, and the colors of your mind.

As you form relationship, between yourself and the art, you are engaged in a creative process. Waves of impressions arrive while the boundaries of self begin to disintegrate. Waves of color and light enter you to dance within. The dance is ancient and new, a troupe of plankton in the ocean, and a flickering trail winding through synapses. Follow that trail. Whatever you discover is gradually integrated into a changed you. Now, you are the work of art – a subtly yet definitely renewed self.


http://sites.google.com/site/mythandtheatre/Home/spring-2009-vol-1-no-1/featured-art-and-artist-jinka-denitabenyshek-zavanova

Graduate certificate in Creative Studies
http://saybrook.edu/phs/academicprograms/certificates/creativitystudy


Alumni Scholarship, Saybrook University,
San Francisco, CA.

2008

The 25th Annual International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, CA

Moderator, Art, Consciousness, and Spirituality, ongoing international discussion: http://www.redefinegod.com/forum/topic/show?id=855906%3ATopic%3A30131

Seclef Hoetzel Award, Council for Higher Education

Tuition Grant, Saybrook Graduate School

Society for Shamanic Practitioners
Full scholarship to conference in Santa Fe, NM


"Creative Opportunity within Creative Block," lecture to Creative Studies Department., Saybrook

2007

Orientation Table Artwork for Snoqualmie Point Park
Commissioned by Alpine Lakes Protection Society
Park project by Mountains to Sound Greenway

Seclef-Hoetzel Award, Counsel for Higher Education

USA Funds Scholarship

Rudy Melone Presidential Scholarship, Saybrook

______________________ 
Snoqualmie Point Park Orientation Table
Public Art Commission

2007_1215_final_snoqptcopyv311.pdf
File Size: 959 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

 
Above: Download recent article about orientation table in Alpine Lakes Wilderness Society Newsletter, see page 2. 

Below: Download full color pdf image.

snoq.pt.alps.fall07.pdf
File Size: 782 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Picture
  • Botanica
  • ABOUT
  • Retrospective
  • Landscape
  • OPERA BOOK
  • ARTIST AS SHAMAN