Patricia A. Bender is a photo-based visual artist living and working in New Jersey and Michigan. She began studying photography in the early 2000s, and was hooked from the moment she shot and developed her first image. She works exclusively in the darkroom with black and white media, and personally creates each image from the moment it is conceived through the finished gelatin silver print. Bender has recently expanded her practice to include drawing, primarily with graphite and charcoal, and is actively experimenting with using her drawings as negatives in the darkroom to create unique cliché-verre photographic prints. Bender has devoted the past two years to an exploration of geometric abstraction. She is fascinated by the mysterious ability of abstraction to move the human heart and mind. When a person photographs a beautiful tree you understand why people respond. After all, it’s a beautiful tree. When a person creates an image of a simple circle bisected by a line you have no understanding why it moves you or others, but it can. Exploring the cryptic nature of the conversation between art and emotion is what drives Bender's art practice. Agnes Martin spent a lifetime creating her simple rectangular grid paintings in an effort to depict happiness on a canvas. What a glorious pursuit, and she captured it with a simple rectangle! Bender has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. She is an artist on the White Columns Curated Artist Registry, and is the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including being named to the 2018 Critical Mass Top 50. Her work has been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Hand Magazine, Lenscratch, The O/D Review and Analog Forever Magazine, among others, and was recently selected as the cover art for a collection of poetry by acclaimed Tunisian poet Mokhtar el Amraoui. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as many other public, corporate, and private collections. She is represented by Corners Gallery in Ithaca, NY. CV available upon request